Friday’s Endnotes – 02/13/26

By , February 13, 2026.

AI companies urge Ninth Circuit to make copyright decisions clear — “The plaintiffs claim at different times, when AI assistants are trained using data that is copyrighted, and when it outputs code to consumers, it strips the Copyright Management Information from works and doesn’t give any attribution when relayed to the end-user. The acts of copying and stripping the CMI from code, appellate attorney Jesse Panuccio said, are violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

Blackbeard’s revenge: State sovereign immunity ends long running copyright battle — “Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, Allen sought to reopen the case in 2021, relying on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) and introducing a new constitutional theory based on United States v. Georgia (2006). The district court allowed Allen to amend his complaint and proceed with his claims under the ‘Georgia theory,’ which argues for case-by-case abrogation of state sovereign immunity for conduct that violates the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Shutterstock’s eligibility for DMCA safe harbor is thrown into question — “A federal jury will have to decide whether a prominent photo licensing service applied its ‘aesthetic, editorial, or marketing judgment’ to user uploads and therefore lost its right to protection under the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held.”

Adam Schiff And John Curtis Introduce Bill To Require Tech To Disclose Copyrighted Works Used In AI Training Models — “The Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting Act would require companies file a notice with the Register of Copyrights that detail the copyrighted works used to train datasets for an AI model. The notice would have to be filed before a new model is publicly released, and would apply retroactively to models already available to consumers.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 02/06/26

By , February 06, 2026.

Top Noteworthy Copyright Stories from January 2026 — “To kick off 2026, there were some big developments arising from two copyright cases in addition to two new AI copyright lawsuits being filed—bringing the number of total AI and copyright cases filed to around 75. Here is a quick snapshot of the top copyright news stories from January 2026.”

‘Ripping’ Clips for YouTube Reaction Videos can Violate the DMCA, Court Rules — “After hearing both sides, U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi denied the motion to dismiss the DMCA circumvention claims, allowing the case to move forward on that claim. ‘Mr. Cordova has adequately pled that YouTube applies technological measures, including ‘rolling-cipher technology’ designed to prevent unauthorized downloading, to videos published on its platform that effectively control access to his videos for purposes of § 1201(a).’

Fighting online piracy in 2025: expanding copyright enforcement to new intermediaries — “Different undertakings in various jurisdictions are adopting strategies aimed at achieving faster and more effective enforcement mechanisms, with the objective of reducing the levels of piracy they face. The following sections analyse these developments, with particular attention to efforts to extend blocking injunctions to intermediaries beyond traditional Internet Service Providers, as well as the potential consequences of such strategies.”

Brazil’s AI take on Taylor Swift tests limits of copyright law — “A viral track removed from Spotify continues to circulate online, highlighting legal gray areas around AI, authorship and unfair competition in Brazil.”

How Anne Frank will (also) have a say on copyright enforcement in the age of AI — “If the CJEU embraces the approach recommended by AG Rantos (and AG Szpunar), there will be other important consequences. One for all could be to give (fuller) effect to inter alia Article 53(1)(c) of the AI Act. This provision indicates that providers of general-purpose AI models need to comply with EU copyright rules, irrespective of where the training of the AI model in question is undertaken.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 01/16/26

By , January 16, 2026.

Publishers Seek to Join Class Action Against Google — “At the heart of the lawsuit is the charge that, in the rush to build its Generative AI Gemini product, Google illegally copied millions of books rather than reach licensing deals with copyright owners. The result is a Gemini product that, the complaint charges, competes directly with books in the market.”

Copyright in Congress: 2025 Year in Review — “Most Congressional activities in 2025 were focused on two main issues: (1) AI and copyright and (2) judicial site blocking measures against commercial piracy websites. This blog summarizes some of the bills introduced and some notable hearings from 2025, and what issues Congress will likely focus on in 2026.”

Ninth Circuit dispensing with intrinsic copyright infringement test — “The key issue arising from the case is the acknowledgement of the Ninth Circuit itself that the intrinsic test ‘has lost its legal content’ and that it has ‘fundamental flaws’. Despite agreeing with the Court’s findings, Judges Wardlaw and Johnstone suggested that the ultimate outcome is inappropriate and that it is now time to dispense with the intrinsic test.”

Vietnam’s New IP Law: The General Direction Makes Sense but Regulatory Details will be Key — “Throwing the cultural sector under the bus in the hopes of attracting some ephemeral hi-tech AI jobs is a false bargain. Strong cultural industries enable the development of strong content licensing markets for AI development, enabling a virtuous circle of further creativity.”

Shenzhen Court Affirms Copyright Protection for Industrial Embedded Software via Judicial Forensics — “In a detailed decision involving micro-dispensing technology, the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court leveraged expert forensic appraisal and in-court technical verification to find that a competitor’s embedded firmware infringed a German manufacturer’s software copyrights.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 01/09/26

By , January 09, 2026.

Permission to appeal granted in Getty Images v Stability copyright claim — “The judge rejected the claim on the basis that the words “infringing copy” must mean that the “article” (which she accepted Stable Diffusion was) must actually contain the works on which it was trained… This element of the case could, if Getty was successful, or is on appeal, could be (to put it mildly) impactful. It could mean that LLMs trained without authorisation or other lawful excuse under UK copyright law, could not be possessed, sold, hired, advertised, or distributed in the course of business in the UK.”

AI Copyright Lawsuit Developments in 2025: A Year in Review — “This blog will focus on the most significant takeaways from 2025 and look ahead to what is sure to be a pivotal year for AI-related copyright lawsuits in 2026.”

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book — “Now, some of those same researchers – Ahmed Ahmed, A. Feder Cooper, Sanmi Koyejo, and Percy Liang, from Stanford and Yale – have found that commercial models used in production, specifically Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Grok 3, memorize and can reproduce copyrighted material, just like open weight models.”

Judges Question Key Copyright Test in Photographer’s Case Against Kat Von D Over Miles Davis Tattoo — “Two judges on the panel issued separate concurring opinions agreeing with the outcome in Sedlick’s copyright case but strongly criticizing the legal test that led to it. Both judges questioned whether the Ninth Circuit’s decades-old ‘intrinsic test,’ also known as the ‘total concept and feel’ test, should continue to be used at all.”

AI copyright battles enter pivotal year as US courts weigh fair use — “After a string of fresh lawsuits and a landmark settlement in 2025, the new year promises to bring a wave of rulings that could define how U.S. copyright law applies to generative AI. At stake is whether companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta can rely on the legal doctrine of fair use to shield themselves from liability – or if they must reimburse copyright holders, which could cost billions.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 12/19/25

By , December 19, 2025.

Proposed US Bill Reduces Fees and Barriers to Copyrighting Photos — “VACRA would increase the cap on group photo registrations to 3,000 works, up from 750, and would order the US Copyright Office to create a new deferred registration option for photo, graphic, and sculptural works, reducing the cost of a deferred registration by half and delay examination of those works until the copyright owner requests it, Bloomberg Law reports. Additionally, a work’s registration would become effective the day a deferred application is submitted, which would allow a copyright owner to enforce that copyright in court even if it hasn’t been examined by the Office.”

Judge advances digital publisher Ziff Davis’ ChatGPT copyright infringement claims — “Ruling on OpenAI’s motion to dismiss Ziff Davis’ first amended complaint, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein refused to throw out three of the publisher’s copyright infringement claims in which the Mashable publisher accused OpenAI of distributing copies of its copyrighted works with the copyright management information removed, in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

Respondents to UK AI Consultation Overwhelmingly Want AI Companies to License Copyrighted Works in All Cases — “In a Progress Statement published Monday, the UK Government said that its ongoing consultation on copyright and AI has drawn over 11,500 responses, 10,112 of which were submitted via an online survey service, and that 88% of those who responded online supported requiring licenses to use copyrighted works for AI training in all cases.”

Bringing Law and Order to the AI Wild West — “We’ve witnessed spikes in licensing, agreements, and other constructive partnerships and developments in response to different news, like when CloudFlare offered tools for news media publishers to make their news media content unavailable for AI scraping without permission and when news of the Anthropic settlement first broke. But, in many ways, those spikes pale in comparison to the explosion of licensing activities we have witnessed over the past several weeks.”

The CJEU’s Mio/Konektra ruling on the copyright protection of works of applied art: interpreting the interpreter — “It is not possible to establish standards of protection that allow us to determine in abstract terms and with total certainty whether a work of applied art is copyright protected. Such an ambition, as the AG has rightly pointed out, is utopian, since the classification of as a work in copyright law requires inevitably complex and, in part, subjective assessments which can only be made on a case-by-case basis. What the CJEU can do in order to prevent to the maximum possible extent divergent decisions from the Courts of the EU Member States is to formulate in the clearest and least ambiguous possible manner the abstract criteria that should be applied in the concrete cases by those courts. In the Mio/Konektra ruling, the CJEU has accomplished this mission with a fair amount of success.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 12/12/25

By , December 12, 2025.

OpenAI Toronto Star jurisdiction decision — “An Ontario court just released an important decision refusing to dismiss a copyright, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract claims brought by the Toronto Star and other newspaper publishers against OpenAI for lack of jurisdiction. In Toronto Star Newspapers Limited v. OpenAI Inc., 2025 ONSC 6217, Justice Kimmel held that the Ontario court had subject matter jurisdiction over the claims in the proceeding and personal jurisdiction over some of the operating companies of one of the leading U.S. based generative AI companies, OpenAI.”

AI must pay: On the DPIIT working paper on AI and Copyright Issues — “This has led to a fierce debate that pits the interests of AI hyperscalers and developers against content producers (news, entertainment and book publishing, to name a few). In this light, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s working paper on AI and Copyright Issues’ proposal is a welcome step towards a solution where content providers are remunerated, without having a system that could put India’s AI ecosystem at a disadvantage.”

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Reach Landmark Agreement to Bring Beloved Characters from Across Disney’s Brands to Sora — “Under the agreement, Disney and OpenAI are affirming a shared commitment to the responsible use of AI that protects user safety and the rights of creators. Together, the companies will advance human-centered AI that respects the creative industries and expands what is possible for storytelling.”

Senate IP Subcommittee Hears from Witnesses on Impact of Proposal to Compensate Artists for Radio Plays — “According to Senator Adam Schiff, the Subcommittee’s Ranking Member, the United States stands alongside only Iran and North Korea in refusing to recognize a performance right for sound recordings on the radio (Cuba also does not have a performance right, according to other witnesses).”

Amicus Briefs in ‘Thomson Reuters v. Ross’ Case Urge Application of Established Standards of Copyrightability, Fair Use — “While the case involves technology that is different than the technologies powering large language models (LLMs) and other generative models at the center of dozens of other lawsuits, it addresses significant fair use and copyrightability issues that could have a wide-ranging impact on copyright owners and AI developers. As amici explain, it’s critical that the lower court’s decision be affirmed so that long-established standards of copyright protection are upheld and that fair use not be applied in a way that excuses unauthorized, competitive uses in the name of supposed ‘transformative’ AI.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 12/05/25

By , December 05, 2025.

Quick Reactions to the Cox v. Sony Music Oral Argument — From Bruce Boyden: “The Cox v. Sony Music Entertainment argument just ended as I started this; here are my immediate takeaways. (For more detail on the case, see my blog series over the weekend: Part 1 on the contributory infringement test, Part 2 on the confusion about the required mental state after Grokster, and Part 3 on the connections between contributory copyright infringement doctrine and the common law.)”

Chicago Tribune Sues Perplexity AI for Copyright Infringement — “The Chicago Tribune sued Perplexity AI on December 4, 2025, for copyright infringement, alleging unauthorized scraping and summarization of its articles via the startup’s RAG system, which deprives the newspaper of traffic and revenue. This lawsuit echoes broader AI-media conflicts and could force Perplexity to adopt licensing models.”

Top Noteworthy Copyright Stories from November 2025 — “Licensing discussions between AI companies and copyright owners has been on the upswing, especially since the settlement in the Anthropic case was announced. In November, there was game-changing news on this front with the announcement of landmark settlements in two music AI copyright cases and new AI partnerships.”

French government considering AI bill ‘to protect copyright and reward creators’ — “Initial agreements between developers and copyright holders ‘are neither systematic nor sufficient to ensure the fair remuneration’ of content used to train generative AI, the statement said adding that a broad interpretation of data-mining exemption is a particular issue. One possible measure to be included in the bill would be a reversal of the burden of proof to establish a ‘presumption of use of cultural content by AI providers’ instead of creators having to prove their content has been used.”

No second bite at the apple for Latin American music publisher — “A music publisher that specializes in Latin American compositions could not relitigate the issue of whether it owned the rights to ten poems that were adapted by a Puerto Rican musician, the federal court for Puerto Rico has held. The court, in dismissing the music publisher’s counterclaim in the latest of a long-running series of legal battles between the two parties, found that the issue of ownership had already been litigated in an earlier lawsuit and there was no reason why the matter should be reopened in the current case.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 11/21/25

By , November 21, 2025.

Warner Music settles copyright lawsuit with Udio, signs deal for AI music platform — “Warner Music Group (WMG) has settled a copyright infringement case with AI music startup Udio, the label announced on Wednesday. The two have also entered into a licensing deal for an AI music creation service that’s set to launch in 2026.”

AI Company Infringed Copyright, Thomson Reuters Argues — “Thomson Reuters is urging an appeals court to leave in place a ruling that artificial intelligence company Ross Intelligence infringed copyright by training its legal research service on material published by Westlaw. ‘Copying protectable expression to create a competing substitute isn’t innovation: it’s theft,’ Thomson Reuters argues in papers filed Wednesday with the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.”

Court Rules AI News Summaries May Infringe Copyright — “Cohere is one of the first major decisions to sustain a text-based output copying claim involving non-verbatim news summaries. For months, AI companies have pointed to Judge Stein’s dismissal of the CIR claims as proof that summary theories were DOA. Judge McMahon just showed the door is still very much open.”

Japanese court orders Cloudflare to pay ¥500 million over manga piracy — “Cloudflare provided a server for ‘two massive manga piracy sites that distribute over 4,000 manga titles without permission and rack up 300 million views a month,’ the publishers said. At issue in the lawsuit was whether Cloudflare was the main entity in charge of pirated manga distribution.”

The first major Generative AI and copyright case in Brazil: first impressions and challenges ahead — “Last August, Brazil became the stage for a new chapter in the controversies of Generative AI (Gen AI) and copyright – its first high-profile case, in which OpenAI faces a lawsuit from Folha de São Paulo (‘Folha’), a major newspaper company in the country. While this case may seem in many ways similar to the United States-based New York Times case, it also stands apart due to a number of peculiarities in Brazilian copyright law – as discussed below.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 11/14/25

By , November 14, 2025.

Op-ed: AI copyright policy could be a matter of life and death — “Here’s the critical point: Protecting intellectual property won’t make us lose the AI race. It is a compelling strategic advantage. The next leap in AI capability, especially in specialized fields like healthcare, requires access to proprietary, curated data and deep collaboration across stakeholders.”

ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics, German court rules — “The Munich regional court sided in favour of Germany’s music rights society GEMA, which said ChatGPT had harvested protected lyrics by popular artists to ‘learn’ from them.”

Birkenstock Wins Copyright Case Against Shoe Retailer Scapino — “Birkenstock expects that this case could get attention because it has a different result from that reached by the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) in a similar case. In that case, Germany’s highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction — it is responsible for review of lower court decisions on appeal for judicial errors of law — had determined this past February that Birkenstock sandals are not eligible for copyright protection.”

Türkiye to launch collective to enforce digital copyright bill — “Nazım Elmas, chair of the parliament’s Digital Media Commission, told daily Milliyet that a key element of the plan is the creation of a rights-management organization similar to MESAM, Türkiye’s music copyright collective. This new body would negotiate with tech companies on behalf of content producers and determine payment rates.”

SCOTUS Denies Petition Seeking Review of Ninth Circuit’s ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ Copyright Ruling — “Halicki contended that the Ninth Circuit’s decision deepened a long-standing circuit split on the proper test for character copyrightability. The filing highlighted the conflict with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits. Those circuits apply a more straightforward ‘distinctiveness’ test, which asks whether a character is distinctive from a generic stock character. Halicki urged the Court to adopt this alternative test, arguing it is ‘simple, predictable, and consonant with the principle of ‘originality””.

Friday’s Endnotes – 11/07/25

By , November 07, 2025.

Understanding IP Matters: Piracy Costs Up to $71 Billion Annually — “On the current episode of Understanding IP Matters (UIPM), Ruth Vitale, Hollywood producer, founder and co-president of Paramount Classics, and president of Fine Line Features, discusses her efforts to effect U.S. legislation that would allow for site blocking, thereby strengthening the entertainment industry and protecting U.S. consumers.”

Why AI Opt-Out Systems Don’t Work — “But there’s a reason that copyright law has never embraced an opt-out system and that’s because opt-out systems do not work. There are many legal, technical, operational, and policy problems and inefficiencies with an opt-out system. So many, in fact, that that it is impossible to explain them all in one blog post. But that’s not going to stop us from trying.”

Getty Images v Stability: Long-awaited judgment rejects majority of Getty’s claim — “In one of the most anticipated judgments of the past few years, the High Court of England & Wales has handed down its judgment in Getty Images v Stability AI. The Court (judgment delivered by Mrs Justice Joanna Smith DBE) has for the most part rejected Getty’s claim, finding only a “historic and extremely limited” trade mark infringement. We will, I expect, be publishing more on the case over the coming weeks, but this is this Kat’s initial reaction.”

Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool — “‘Perplexity’s misconduct must end,’ Amazon added. ‘Perplexity is not allowed to go where it has been expressly told it cannot; that Perplexity’s trespass involves code rather than a lockpick makes it no less unlawful.'”

University of Vermont owns ‘Rally Cat’ logo under work-for-hire doctrine — “An ex-employee’s infringement claims failed because the employee’s design was found to be within the scope of employment and derived from a preexisting university logo.”

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