Tackling the blurred lines between counterfeiting and ingenuity in the art world is certainly not an easy endeavor. Indeed, in a world where “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed“, it is a rather daunting exercise for any court to draw the line between inspiration and imitation in copyrighted works, let alone in…

The case recently brought against OpenAI by the New York Times is the latest in a series of legal actions involving AI in the United States, and mirrored in other countries –notably, the UK. In order to train their technologies, should AI companies be allowed to use works under copyright protection without consent? The lawsuits…

On November 27, 2023, the Beijing Internet Court (BIC) ruled in an infringement lawsuit (Li v. Liu) that an AI-generated image is copyrightable and that a person who prompted the AI-generated image is entitled to the right of authorship under Chinese Copyright Law (see our bilingual version, and the later-released official translation). Plaintiff generated an…

New year’s fatigue? Or possibly AI fatigue? But the new year has only just begun! It does seem like the topic of AI and copyright was everywhere in the copyright world last year. While some digital topics have been known to cause a great commotion in copyright circles only to later sink practically without a…

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…

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…

Free spaces in copyright law are fundamental. They allow us to use and enjoy copyright works, ultimately supporting the creation of future works. Yet, since the Information Society Directive, European copyright law has preferred to protect and incentivise online business models over creativity. This post reflects on the role of exploiters, namely copyright holders with…

As succinctly noted by Susan Bischoff in a prior post, the ongoing legal saga surrounding the ‘Metall auf Metall’ case continues to yield legal insights. Presently, a new reference from the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) asks the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for vital interpretive guidance concerning the parody exception…

The US class action against Google Bard (J.L. v. Alphabet Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-03440) In a recent post we analysed a class action filed in the US against Open AI for unauthorized use of copyright works for training of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT (here) (“Generative…