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…
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…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the most popular posts over the past few months. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
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…
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…
