Posts in Copyright

Copyright in the Courts: A Roundup of Key Copyright Decisions for 2023

Copyright exits everywhere—from books on a library shelf to music playing on the radio, to the software running the electronic device on which you are reading this article. Copyright’s broad scope and extensive reach foster a varied and fascinating landscape of copyright cases. From cases involving the use of a celebrity photograph, animated dancing video game characters, to artificial intelligence (AI) infringement inquiries, the number and type of matters copyright touches is seemingly infinite. This provides an evergreen bounty of copyright cases to digest. The following highlights some of the top copyright decisions of 2023.

Jury Awards Photographer Max Damages in Copyright Suit Against Senior Living Giant

A California jury on Monday awarded what is reportedly the “largest maximum statutory damages verdict for photography infringement in U.S. history,” according to a press release issued by the plaintiff’s counsel in the case. Scott Hargis is an architectural photographer who sued Pacifica Senior Living Management LLC in September 2022 for damages and injunctive relief related to infringement of 43 of Hargis’ photos that Pacifica used to advertise and market its senior living facilities.

Copyright Fright-Night: Where Should We Stand on the Outputs of AI Image Generators?

From SAG-AFTRA strikes to the class action lawsuit of McKernan against Stability AI, Stability Diffusion and Midjourney, the creative industries are concerned with the ability of AI systems to produce outputs in the likeness of their original works. Earlier this year, a class action lawsuit against popular generative AI developers Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt was filed in the United States alleging copyright infringement. McKernan and others claimed that generative AI outputs have reproduced a significant portion of their original work.

What Happened at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2023

In 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) addressed key challenges in copyright law, ranging from navigating the intricacies of AI-generated content to refining rules for the modern music industry, as well as proposing new exemptions as part of the ninth triennial rulemaking proceeding. These major developments underscore the Office’s dedication to keeping copyright law current in the face of rapid evolution, and offering a glimpse of what lies ahead.

Why You Should Care About a Federal Right of Publicity

If you’re reading IPWatchdog, you probably have some familiarity with intellectual property rights, such as patents, copyrights and trademarks. However, one distinct type of intellectual property is often left out and misunderstood. It’s called the right of publicity. While publicity rights are often confused with other types of intellectual property or privacy rights, or mistakenly associated only with famous individuals, they are incredibly important, far-reaching, and deserve much more attention.

IP at the Top: What the Supreme Court’s 2023 IP Rulings Mean for Practice

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court decided four intellectual property cases. The cases touched all of the major fields of intellectual property—two cases interpreted the federal trademark act (Jack Daniel’s and Abitron), one case involved patent enablement (Amgen), and one case explicated the federal copyright statutes (Goldsmith). The decisions were split along party lines, with two cases finding in favor of intellectual property owners (Jack Daniel’s and Goldsmith) and two cases in favor of the accused infringers (Abitron and Amgen).