Last week, the District Court of Hamburg, Germany, held a hearing in the first European case to examine the legality of using copyrighted works for the purpose of training generative AI models. The case centers on LAION e.V.’s (a German non-profit organization that builds widely used training datasets) download of an image by German photographer…
The discussion on creators’ remuneration is gaining momentum. The main reason: the growing popularity of generative AI and its potential to substitute human creative labour. With the current income streams in danger, new ways of remunerating creators are put forward. The most intuitive proposition is that for providers of generative AI, big tech, to remunerate…
How did we get here? Case C-159/23 Sony Computer Entertainment Europe revolves around the scope of protection of computer programs under the 2009 Software Directive. The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) will respond to two preliminary questions posed by the German Supreme Court. The detailed background of the case was discussed in a…
Welcome to the second trimester of the 2024 roundup of EU copyright law right in time before the (hopefully) quiet summer period starts. In this edition, we update you on what has happened between March and June 2024 in EU copyright law. As our regular readers know, this roundup series includes Court of Justice (CJEU)…
Since 22 May 2024, Meta has notified to European users of Instagram and Facebook – through in-app notifications and emails – an update of its privacy policy, linked to the upcoming implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the area. Indeed, the company already developed and made available some AI features and experiences in other…
The EU laws on digital services (Digital Services Act – DSA) and artificial intelligence (AI Act, cited here according to EP document P9_TA(2024)0138 of 13 March 2024) are intended to ensure safety and trustworthiness on the Internet and in dealing with AI. These overall aims also include the protection of copyright and related rights. The…
The testimony was properly excluded—and without it, the software company could not prevail on its copyright claims. A Detroit federal court correctly found that a software designer moved too late to introduce expert testimony supporting the copyrightability of its source code, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held. The court, in…
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. It is hard to remember how divisive and controversial the Directive was during its creation. The Directive’s most controversial provision – Article 17 – which brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets and…
In February 2024, the Court of Appeal in New Zealand (the Court) issued a judgment on a long-running matter between a separating couple looking to sort out their property. The appellant, Ms Alalääkkölä, was an artist who had created copyrighted works throughout her career. Her former spouse, Mr Palmer, argued that the copyright in those…
As the environmental crisis escalates due to overproduction and overconsumption, there is an increasing recognition of the urgent need for environmental consciousness and a shift towards a sustainable, circular economy (see, in the intellectual property context, Pihlajarinne & Ballardini (2020), Senftleben (2023), Calboli (2024)). Upcycling, notably, which involves reworking old items or their parts into…
