Friday’s Endnotes – 07/25/25

By , July 25, 2025.

Why Courts Should Dismiss Challenges to Copyright Registrations Issued in the Interregnum — Former U.S. Copyright Office General Counsel Jon Baumgarten argues that trial courts should dismiss or decline to hear challenges to copyright registrations issued since May 22, when competing claims as to who is the Register of Copyrights arose, under the authority of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Reed Elsevier v Muchnick.

Ottawa weighs plans on AI, copyright as OpenAI fights Ontario court jurisdiction — “Canada’s artificial intelligence minister is keeping a close watch on court cases in Canada and the U.S. to determine next steps for Ottawa’s regulatory approach to AI. Some AI companies have claimed early wins south of the border, and OpenAI is now fighting the jurisdiction of an Ontario court to hear a lawsuit by news publishers.”

Transformative Use Analysis in Bartz v. Anthropic AI Case Marred by Fatal Flaws — “The court in Bartz v. Anthropic arrived at the conclusion that the unauthorized use of the plaintiffs’ works for training a generative AI model qualifies as fair use, but the order’s analyses of transformative use has many fatal flaws. The disregard for Ninth Circuit precedent and misapplication of the Supreme Court’s Warhol decision is nothing short of alarming, so much so that it’s hard to see how this decision will not be corrected on appeal.”

Trump Loses Copyright Fight Over Woodward Interview Recordings — “Trump’s primary theory—that he and Woodward were joint authors of the interviews—collided with both Second Circuit precedent and his own pleadings. Under Childress v. Taylor and Thomson v. Larson, joint authorship requires both independently copyrightable contributions and mutual intent to be co-authors at the time of creation.”

New York Court Tackles the Legality of AI Voice Cloning — “The court dismissed plaintiffs’ infringement claim with respect to the use of the plaintiffs’ voice recordings to train Lovo’s AI model, but with leave to amend. The court held that there was insufficient factual detail in the complaint regarding how the AI training process allegedly infringed the plaintiffs’ exclusive rights, but that it would be straightforward for plaintiffs to amend their complaint to make the appropriate allegations. In a footnote, the court noted that Lovo asserted in a single sentence that its training was fair use, but that if plaintiffs amended their complaint, and defendants again moved to dismiss, a more thorough fair-use defense would need to be articulated.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 07/18/25

By , July 18, 2025.

The Largest IP Theft in History: Takeaways from the Senate Hearing on AI and Copyright Piracy — “On July 16, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing titled Too Big to Prosecute?: Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training. While some courts may struggle to articulate why these pervasive pirating activities of AI companies seem so disturbing—Senators on the Subcommittee took charge in demonstrating the ridiculous, un-American position that what they referred to as “the largest IP theft in history” should ever be condoned.”

US authors suing Anthropic can band together in copyright class action, judge rules — “U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action, opens new tab on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from ‘pirate libraries’ LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022. Alsup said Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books from the pirate websites, which could make it liable for billions of dollars in damages if the authors’ case is successful.”

Generative AI & Copyright Law in India: Who Owns Machine-Made Works? — “Although courts in India have not yet ruled definitively on generative AI and copyright ownership, recent judicial and regulatory developments signal growing concern and attention toward the issue.”

Can GenAI and Copyright Coexist? — “Gen AI has the potential to benefit industry and society in many ways. But achieving that potential will require more robust and transparent partnerships between technology firms and the creative industries. On our current path we risk killing the goose—or in this case the authors, musicians, coders, and filmmakers—who laid the golden eggs that are key to the present and future value of gen AI output.”

WeTransfer Changes Policy After Concern It Could Train AI on User’s Photos — “The controversy began after a recent update to WeTransfer’s terms appeared to grant the company broad rights over user content, including a clause referencing the use of data to ‘improve performance of machine learning models that enhance our content moderation process.’ This language raised alarms creative professionals, including photographers, some of whom interpreted the terms as giving WeTransfer permission to use, sell, or share their files with AI companies.”

Friday’s Endnotes 07/11/25

By , July 11, 2025.

Top Noteworthy Copyright Stories from June 2025 — June was a busy month for copyright. The Copyright Alliance’s Rachel Kim reviews some of the key developments that took place.

UMG Chief Digital Officer on AI Music: ‘If You Don’t Claim a Seat at the Dinner Table, You Might Wind Up on the Menu’ — “Also during his talk, Nash stressed the position that ‘copyright is not the enemy of innovation’ and that ‘market-based solutions are the answer’ to the challenges AI poses to intellectual property-based industries like music.”

EU’s AI code of practice for companies to focus on copyright, safety — “The code is part of the AI rule book, which will come into effect in a staggered manner and will apply to Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and other companies. Signatories to the code will have to draw up and make publicly available summaries about the content used to train their general-purpose AI models, only employ copyright-protected content when using web crawlers as well as mitigate the risk of copyright-infringing output.”

Pirate IPTV Trio Sentenced to 14 Years Prison For Money Laundering — “A court in Brazil has handed down prison sentences totaling 14 years to three individuals for money laundering offenses linked to a pirate IPTV service. A software developer who made the service available through a popular IPTV app, his sister, and a mutual friend handled thousands of transactions through bank accounts, with funds laundered through a small hosting company.”

Use of Floorplans in Real Estate Listings is Permissible Under U.S. Copyright Law — “Initially, the district court ruled that the floorplan drawings fell within an exception of the Copyright Act that exempts pictures, paintings, photographs or other pictorial representations of an architectural work if it is visible from a public place. The appeals court rejected that theory and remanded the case for further development, observing that a fair use defense might apply. The case found its way back to the Eighth Circuit after the district court granted summary judgment on the basis of the defendants’ fair use.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 06/27/25

By , June 27, 2025.

Fair Use Decision Fumbles Training Analysis but Sends Clear Piracy Message — “First analyzing Anthropic’s use of copyrighted works to train its Claude large language model (LLM), Judge William Alsup immediately falls into a fair use trap that the Supreme Court warned against in its seminal 2023 Warhol v. Goldsmith decision, letting his foregone conclusion about the transformative nature of the use control the rest of the fair use analysis.”

U.S. Copyright Office Replaces Online Public Catalog with Copyright Public Records System — “Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is pleased to announce that the Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) has replaced its Online Public Catalog. CPRS provides copyright registration and recordation data with advanced search capabilities, filters, and improved interfaces for public users and Office staff. … CPRS includes both recordation and registration information from 1978 to the present and searchable metadata for over 3.8 million registration applications from 1898 to 1945.”

Unlocking Creativity: The Socioeconomic Benefits of Copyright — “In a world increasingly driven by ideas, innovation, and digital transformation, copyright stands as a cornerstone of economic vitality and cultural expression. This report is a comprehensive literature review that explores the powerful role copyright plays in fueling creativity, supporting high-quality jobs, and driving global competitiveness through creative sectors.”

Getty Images Drops Main Copyright Claims Against Stability AI in UK Legal Case — “The withdrawn claims centered on Getty’s assertion that Stability trained Stable Diffusion using millions of copyrighted images without authorization, including some that contained Getty’s distinct watermark. However, legal experts say the company likely struggled to establish that any alleged infringement occurred under U.K. jurisdiction.”

Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features — “The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 06/20/25

By , June 20, 2025.

Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book — “These results give everyone in the AI copyright debate something to latch onto. For AI industry critics, the big takeaway is that—at least for some models and some books—memorization is not a fringe phenomenon.”

Bots are overwhelming websites with their hunger for AI data — “‘The cultural institutions that host online collections are not resourced to continue adding more servers, deploying more sophisticated firewalls, and hiring more operations engineers in perpetuity,’ the report says. ‘That means it is in the long-term interest of the entities swarming them with bots to find a sustainable way to access the data they are so hungry for.'”

Supreme Court declines to hear three IP cases — “Copyright discovery rule. The Court declined to hear the petition in RADesign, Inc. v. Michael Grecco Productions, Inc., Dkt No. 24-1137, letting stand a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit allowing a photographer’s copyright infringement case against a shoe designer to proceed.”

Beijing court hands AI copyright violators up to 18 months in prison — “The four defendants were accused of using AI software to alter original illustrations found online, creating more than 3,000 jigsaw puzzles for sale and making illegal profits exceeding 270,000 yuan ($37,556), prosecutors said. The court found them guilty under a criminal indictment from district prosecutors, marking what is reportedly the first criminal ruling in Beijing involving copyright infringement through generative AI.”

Music Publishers and X Begin ‘Good Faith’ Negotiations in Copyright Lawsuit — “’Twitter [now X] stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service,’ National Music Publishers Association president and CEO David Israelite said in a statement around the time of the suit’s filing. ‘Twitter knows full well that music is leaked, launched, and streamed by billions of people every day on its platform.’”

Friday’s Endnotes – 06/13/25

By , June 13, 2025.

Say ‘No’ to Unlicensed AI Training! — The Copyright Alliance kicked off a grassroots AI campaign that encourages the public to send letters to Members of Congress and President Trump in anticipation of the administration releasing its AI Action Plan in mid-July 2025. The letters urge elected officials to protect the rights and livelihoods of creators by rejecting laws and policies that would allow AI companies to train on their work without consent and compensation. Those interested in participating may use the letters “as is,” revise them, or write their own.

London AI firm says Getty copyright case poses ‘overt threat’ to industry — “Getty’s case against Stability AI for copyright and trademark infringement relating to its vast photography archives reached the high court in London on Monday.” Bonus content—IPKitten has a series of posts covering the legal issues raised in the lawsuit: UK trial begins… (Part 1), Part 2 – copyright and database right, Part 3 – Defences.

In first-of-its-kind lawsuit, Hollywood giants sue AI firm for copyright infringement — “Many companies have gone after AI firms for copyright infringement, such as The New York Times (which sued OpenAI and Microsoft), Sony Music Entertainment (which filed a suit against AI song generator startups Suno and Udio) and Getty Images (against Stability AI). But this is the first time major Hollywood players have joined the fight against the AI landscape.”

AI-driven system helps cut copyright disputes in Textile City — “China’s Textile City, the world’s largest textile distribution hub located in Keqiao, handles about a quarter of the global fabric trade and exports textile products to more than 190 countries and regions. The bustling business also sees frequent disputes related to fabric patterns, said Li Zisu, vice-president of the Keqiao District People’s Court. She revealed that between 2008 and 2020, more than 5,000 merchants were involved in pattern-related lawsuits, and said that the biggest challenge in handling these cases was determining ownership of the pattern copyright.”

Italy probes Meta over music copyright negotiations — “The Italian Competition Authority said it was probing Meta’s alleged abuse of economic dependence of the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE), the public authority charged with protecting artists’ copyright in Italy. The SIAE had a contract with Meta that expired in December 2022.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 05/30/25

By , May 30, 2025.

Getty Images spending millions to battle a ‘world of rhetoric’ in AI suit, CEO says — “Technology startups like OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral have flourished by taking vast amounts of data from the open web and using it to train their foundational AI models, which can produce lifelike texts, images and videos. However, the strategies of these firms have raised concerns over their use of copyrighted material. Several lawsuits have targeted AI firms over alleged copyright infringements from The New York Times’ suit against OpenAI to several U.S. record labels’ claims against AI music generation services Suno and Udio.”

Generative AI’s Illusory Case for Fair Use — “Despite wide employment of anthropomorphic terms to describe their behavior, AI machines do not learn or reason as humans do. Instead, they employ an algorithmic process to store the works they are fed during the training process. They do not ‘know’ anything independently of the works on which they are trained, so their output is a function of the copied materials… The exploitation of expressive content to produce new expressive content sharply distinguishes AI copying from the copying at issue in the technological fair use cases relied upon by AI’s fair use advocates.”

Car in Gone in Sixty Seconds is not entitled to copyright protection — “Prior Ninth Circuit precedent, DC Comics v. Towle, 802 F.3d 1012 (9th Cir. 2015), establishes a test to determine whether a character is entitled to copyright protection: (1) the character must have ‘physical as well as conceptual qualities,’ (2) the character must be ‘sufficiently delineated to be recognizable as the same character whenever it appears’ and display ‘consistent, identifiable character traits and attributes,’ and (3) the character must be ‘especially distinctive’ and contain ‘some unique elements of expression.’ The Eleanor character failed all three parts of the test, the court of appeals found.”

Judge Rejects Ex-Copyright Chief’s Bid to Pause Trump Firing — “Even if Perlmutter was likely to succeed on the merits, [Judge] Kelly said his analysis was pinned on the irreparable harm threshold required to grant the order and Perlmutter did not meet that requirement. Perlmutter’s argument of irreparable harm rested on the idea that she was deprived of the statutory right to function as the register of copyrights, Kelly said. Recent court decisions from the US Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit have been ‘skeptical’ of that argument, the judge said.”

The ‘beige Amazon influencer’ lawsuit is headed for dismissal — “The lawsuit was simultaneously disconcerting and benign, eerie and borderline comical: the story of two women whose lives had begun to resemble each other’s via social media platforms made for a compelling storyline. The cream, white, and beige aesthetic of their content (and lives) meant that the essence of what was allegedly infringed was commonplace, even basic — but the similarities, documented over dozens of examples submitted to the court, were strange nonetheless”

Friday’s Endnotes – 05/23/25

By , May 23, 2025.

Judge Hints Anthropic’s AI Training on Books is Fair Use — “Anthropic’s use of notorious digital piracy websites raised concerns for Alsup. In response, the company’s counsel, Joseph Richard Farris of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, argued the Supreme Court has been skeptical whether bad faith has any effect on the fair use analysis. Alsup pushed back, saying ‘I have a hard time seeing that you can commit what is ordinarily a crime, but get exonerated because you end up using it for a transformative use.'”

Copyright Alliance CEO and Others Resign from ALI’s Copyright Restatement Project — “In a statement issued today, Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid announced that he, along with numerous other advisers and liaisons, have resigned from the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement of Copyright Law (Restatement) project, effective immediately. The resignations follow those of four prominent law professors earlier this week.”

Top copyright official sues Trump over firing — “As head of the nation’s copyright office, Perlmutter would have overseen registering copyright claims and maintaining records about copyright ownership. The office functioned within the Library of Congress by providing the copyright deposits that make up a significant part of the library’s collections. The copyright office is also responsible for conducting studies and advising Congress on copyright issues, including regarding the growing generative artificial intelligence industry.”

Photographer Loses Copyright Lawsuit Claiming Lil Nas X Stole His Poses — “Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the competing Instagram posts had only a handful of minor similarities, which were not enough to constitute copyright infringement. The court also concluded that the poses and themes featured in Woodland’s photos are not protected under copyright law.”

Does Human Learning equal Machine Learning? High Court of Delhi to rule on lawfulness of TDM for Machine Learning — “While dozens of US District Courts are currently grappling with the question of whether AI training with protected works constitutes fair use, the UK High Court is largely grappling with jurisdictional questions, and EU courts are mainly concerned with the modalities of rights reservations … it is now the High Court of Delhi’s turn. “

Friday’s Endnotes – 05/16/25

By , May 16, 2025.

US Copyright Office Releases Highly Anticipated Report on Generative AI Training – Here’s What It Actually Says — “The U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) recently released its highly anticipated Report on Generative AI Training (the third and final part in the USCO’s AI and copyright series) in a pre-publication format. At a time when headlines dominate, and despite the leadership changes underway at the USCO, the report represents a substantial body of work and analysis that explores how copyright law applies to the training of generative AI systems with a level of nuance that reflects the expertise of its drafters and a clear understanding of the importance of both the copyright and AI sectors to the broader innovation ecosystem.”

Leading Scholars Insist Their Names Be Removed from the ALI Restatement of Copyright Law — “Four luminaries of copyright law and scholarship submitted a letter to the American Law Institute (ALI) formally withdrawing their names as Advisers from the Restatement of Copyright Law, approval of which is set to be voted on next week. Professors Shyam Balganesh, Jane Ginsburg, and Peter Menell, along with attorney David Nimmer submitted the May 12 letter conveying strong disagreement with both the substance of the Restatement and the subterfuge in the process.”

AI-Powered News Piracy Site Blocked By ISPs After Court Sides With Publishers — “A joint investigation by Libération and Next revealed that at least 1,000 similar sites churn out infringing content in much the same way. In some cases, AI ‘hallucinations’ aren’t noticed by site operators or the public, resulting in bogus automated news being taken as fact, then cited as source material for articles published on Wikipedia.”

Anthropic expert accused of using AI-fabricated source in copyright case — “A federal judge in San Jose, California, on Tuesday ordered artificial intelligence company Anthropic to respond to allegations that it submitted a court filing containing a ‘hallucination’ created by AI as part of its defense against copyright claims by a group of music publishers. A lawyer representing Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO in a lawsuit over Anthropic’s alleged misuse of their lyrics to train its chatbot Claude told U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen at a hearing that an Anthropic data scientist cited a nonexistent academic article to bolster the company’s argument in a dispute over evidence.”

EUIPO releases study on generative artificial intelligence and copyright — The U.S. Copyright Office was not the only public body to release a major report on AI and copyright this week. On Monday, the European Union Intellectual Property Office published a comprehensive study on the topic, the purpose of which “is to deepen the general understanding of GenAI’s technical functioning, as well as existing and developing solutions underlying the application of EU rules on copyright and Artificial Intelligence. The study offers an in-depth analysis of GenAI developments from the perspective of EU copyright law, covering technical, legal, and economic aspects.”

Friday’s Endnotes – 05/09/25

By , May 09, 2025.

Glaring Omissions from the Kadrey v. Meta Hearing — “…the hearing included little or no discussion of three key points that must be considered as part of any AI training fair use analysis: (1) under the first factor, whether the use was commercial or transformative and the ultimate purpose of the output, (2) the effect of Warhol v. Goldsmith on transformativeness and justification, and (3) the robust and growing market for AI licensing.”

Judge on Meta’s AI training: “I just don’t understand how that can be fair use” — “‘You have companies using copyright-protected material to create a product that is capable of producing an infinite number of competing products,’ Chhabria said. ‘You are dramatically changing, you might even say obliterating, the market for that person’s work, and you’re saying that you don’t even have to pay a license to that person.'”

AAP’s Annual Meeting: Stark Comment on AI and Copyright — “We need to acknowledge the stakes here and recognize the fight we’re in. This is a battle taking place in the public square, on university campuses, and in global capitals all around the world. Our opponents are lobbying for AI exceptions to copyright for national security reasons that will turn over our global IP leadership to bad actors and nation-states that have the exact opposite effect as intended by beginning a rapid race to the bottom.”

Copyright after Loper Bright: New Challenges for the Copyright Office? — “While Loper Bright overrules Chevron deference and reasserts the judiciary’s primary role in statutory interpretation, its impact on copyright law is likely to be limited. Courts have historically applied Chevron sparingly in this area, often relying instead on direct statutory interpretation or the Skidmore framework. Even in cases where Chevron was invoked, courts frequently engaged in their own independent analysis or found clear congressional delegations of authority to administrative bodies.”

India panel to review copyright law amid legal challenges to OpenAI — “The memo, which is not public, said the commerce ministry set up a panel of eight experts last month to examine issues related to AI and their implications for India’s copyright law. The experts have been tasked to ‘identify and analyze the legal and policy issues arising from the use of artificial intelligence in the context of copyright,’ the memo added.”

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