THJ Systems Limited & Anor v Daniel Sheridan & Anor [2023] EWCA Civ 1354 concerned many issues but the one of most interesting was the correct legal test to consider whether a copyright work is original. One would think this has been well rehearsed in numerous cases already, but the Court of Appeal decision…

In 2019, the European Union (EU) adopted its most important copyright reform in the past 20 years with the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive. This ambitious reform sets a precedent that, given the EU’s status as the world leader in digital regulation and the resultant “Brussels Effect”, may be followed elsewhere. Book…

Copyright protection in machine-generated works is not a new issue for law makers. The traditional concept of human authorship was first challenged with the emergence of photography and this has continued every time a new technology comes about. In the U.S., the case of Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884) extended copyright…

Machine readable opt-outs from TDM As we head into the last month of the current EU legislative term, there are increasing signs that EU lawmakers are unable to agree on the AI Act, which was supposed to be one of the crowning digital policy achievements of Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission. Recent media reports suggest…

Recently, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, in line with several decisions of the U.S. Copyright Office’s Review Board, found that human creativity is the sine qua non of copyrightability, refusing to register a work lacking human creative involvement or control. In this way, the U.S. jurisprudence embraces the distinction between…

The UK High Court has held that Lidl’s rights in the Lidl logo were infringed by Tesco’s Clubcard Price(s) signs ([2023] EWHC 873 (Ch)). Specifically, the court made the following findings. Trade mark infringement – Lidl’s trade mark for the Lidl logo was infringed by Tesco’s Clubcard Price(s) signs, which took unfair advantage of Lidl’s…

The posting of the privately-developed standards constitutes fair use—at least when done for non-profit purposes. A public interest organization that made available to the public a collection of technical standards incorporated by reference in federal regulations engaged in a fair use of those standards and therefore did not infringe on the exclusive rights of the…

Part 1 of this post introduced the challenges for copyright associated with generative IP and the legislative developments in this field. This part 2 explores the idea of introducing a statutory license for machine learning purposes for generative AI as a compromise solution to secure a vibrant environment for AI development while preserving the central…

Introduction Generative AI is disrupting the creative process(es) of intellectual works on an unparalleled scale. More and more AI systems offer services that push users’ production capacity for new literary and artistic works beyond unforeseen barriers. Algorithmic tools are gradually colonizing every creative sector, from being able to generate text (i.e., ChatGPT, Smodin), to perform…