Posts Tagged: "copyrights"

On January 16, the U.S. Copyright Office published a final rule in the Federal Register amending agency regulations on small infringement claims filed at the Copyright Claims Board (CCB). Responding to comments from both the legal and copyright industries, the Copyright Office’s final rule addresses disputes to the form of CCB proceeding chosen by claimants, as well as the discretion of CCB officers in penalizing evidentiary violations. As drafted, the Office’s final rule on smaller claim proceedings will become effective on February 15.

The U.S. Copyright Office issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register today offering a new group registration option for frequently updated news websites. According to the Federal Register Notice (FRN), the option would allow online news sites to register “a group of updates to a news website as a collective work with a deposit composed of identifying material representing sufficient portions of the works, rather than the complete contents of the website.”

The most significant development in IP in Europe in 2023—indeed arguably the most significant in nearly 30 years—was the launch of the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court on June 1. The full implications of this are explored here. Beyond the UP and UPC, however, there were a number of. important developments in Europe affecting all the main IP rights.

The complex rules of copyright and trademark law are designed so that creators of popular expressive works and companies marketing authentic branded products are properly protected. This Christmas, we’re looking at a series of rulings from U.S. federal courts on intellectual property (IP) issues involving holiday ornaments, public displays with light sculptures, as well as one of the most popular Christmas songs ever. These cases don’t simply show that a Santa Claus can be designed with non-generic copyrightable elements; they also show members of the U.S. federal judiciary working diligently to properly dispense justice on IP questions between the adverse parties arguing before them.

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.

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.

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.

On December 11, the Review Board of the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) released a letter affirming the USCO’s refusal to register a work created with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) software. The decision to affirm the refusal marks the fourth time a registrant has been documented as being denied the ability to obtain a copyright registration over the output of an AI system following requests for reconsideration.

Recently, Wen Xie argued on IPWatchdog that the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have reached different conclusions regarding “the creative and conceiving capabilities of machines,” which leads to intellectual property (IP) law being self-contradictory. According to Xie, the USCO presumes that artificial intelligence (AI) is creative, while the USPTO does not reach a similar conclusion regarding AI inventorship. I disagree.

In 2017, screenwriters Lee Alfred and Ezequiel Martinez Jr. embarked on what would be a five-year journey for their copyright infringement claim against Walt Disney Pictures over the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Now, one year after it resolved, their legacy lives on through a new era of copyright litigation in Hollywood. Courts continue to rely on the Ninth Circuit’s decision in the Pirates case to allow screenwriters and other artists to proceed past the pleading stage. With that pendulum swing, litigants in copyright cases over Hollywood films will face a range of undeveloped issues. This article provides a brief recap of the impact from the Pirates case and identifies several open issues that litigants are likely to address in future cases as a result.

The President’s recent Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence instructs the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director and Copyright Registrar to collaboratively issue recommendations to the President on further actions for advancing AI innovation through intellectual property, particularly with respect to AI inventorship and AI authorship. But the two offices currently regard AI differently in terms of assessing the creative and conceiving capabilities of machines, which poses a potential contradiction in how intellectual property law treats AI.

Words can have profound impact. The term “patent troll,” coined by an Intel litigator, has done incalculable damage. First use is attributed to Peter Detkin, who is said to have deployed it in 2001 to belittle plaintiffs in a patent case involving the chipmaker. Shortly after its appearance, Detkin emerged as what some in the tech world would consider a bad actor. He co-founded Intellectual Ventures, a company that raised $5.5 billion to acquire more than 40,000 patents and applications for sale, license or enforcement. The IP community needs to be more vigilant about preventing parties of interest and the media from controlling the IP narrative.

On October 30, President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) announcing a series of new agency directives for managing risks related to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The EO prioritizes risks related to critical infrastructure, cybersecurity and consumer privacy but it does not establish clear directives on copyright issues related to generative AI platforms that have garnered much debate in Congress in recent months.

Last week, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NRPM) in the Federal Register as part of the triennial rulemaking process for exceptions to 17 U.S.C. § 1201’s prohibition against circumventing technological protection measures (TPMs) controlling digital access to copyrighted works. This proceeding is the ninth triennial Section 1201 rulemaking since passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, and it starts with the Copyright Office intending to recommend renewal of all but one existing exemption. The Office also announced that it has received petitions for seven classes of newly proposed exemptions for which the agency will initiate three rounds of public comments.

On September 6, OpenAI faced its second invasion of privacy lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California, for allegedly stealing private information from millions of internet users. While the Plaintiffs acknowledge in their complaint that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to create life-saving technologies and herald discoveries that could improve our daily lives, they claim OpenAI crossed the line of using altruistic means of reaching its objective when it abruptly restructured itself into a for-profit business. Following this restructuring, the Plaintiffs allege OpenAI scraped private information from millions of users to train their Large Language Models. Here are five key allegations from the privacy suit against OpenAI.