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””.