The ongoing Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution has machine learning models at its core. Contrary to classic computer programs written by developers, many of these models rely on vast artificial neural networks trained in giant amounts of data. In general, they use what is called a transformer architecture. No one individually writes or encodes these models;…
The two US class actions against Meta We have previously analysed US class actions against Open AI (here) and Google (here) for unauthorized use of copyright works in the training of generative AI tools, respectively ChatGPT, Google Bard and Gemini. To further develop this excursus on the US case law, in this post we…
In recent years, copyright departments in governments around the world have been preoccupied with AI’s effects on copyright industries and, more recently, copyright law challenges created for AI industries. What about ‘Down Under’? Which copyright issues has the Australian government been grappling with? Over the last few years, the Australian government has been observing public…
Dear readers, Happy new year! Welcome to the fourth (and last) round up of EU copyright law for 2023! In this edition, we update you on what has happened in the last three months of 2024 in EU copyright law. The end of the year was busy for both the courts and the policy makers….
Setting the Scene Much ink has been spilled on the legal discourse surrounding generative AI (GenAI) and copyright. In this post, the focus is on the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in the context of training GenAI models, where such use could jeopardise the market for those particular expressions (see Sobel). Several copyright lawsuits have…
In his classic work, ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy’, Josef Schumpeter referred to the ‘waves of creative destruction’ to describe how monopoly rents incentivise entrepreneurs to take risk and innovate. The monopoly rent that the entrepreneur derives from his innovation is short-lived, as another wave of creative destruction soon replaces this wave, and gives way to…
On Friday evening, after 38 hours of negotiations, representatives of the European Parliament, EU member states and the European Commission reached a provisional agreement on the proposed AI Act. The deal reached on Friday night now paves the way for the adoption of the AI Act in the first half of 2024, bringing to an…
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…
