Ah, the public domain—where copyrights dare not tread, and content lives free from the litigious claws of infringement claims. Whether thou art a humble creator or a bold entrepreneur, rejoice! For in this blessed realm, you...more
I recently spoke with TechRadar about the recent social media trend of AI-generated images in the style of beloved animation company Studio Ghibli and the IP considerations surrounding such works. Copyright law in the US...more
Businesses can unknowingly infringe others’ copyrights in all kinds of ways. It’s important for copyright holders to know their rights. It’s also important for those using copyrighted content to be aware of common pitfalls...more
Every year, the world celebrates the first of January as Public Domain Day, marking the release of copyrighted works into the public domain. In 2024, we saw popular intellectual properties enter the public domain, including...more
Want to learn more about drafting, negotiating, and understanding intellectual property and technology contracts and have 10 minutes to spare? Grab your morning coffee or afternoon tea and dig into our Tech Contract Quick...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently heard oral argument in an appeal from a jury verdict that found in favor of Plaintiffs Hermès International and Hermès of Paris, Inc. ("Hermès") against Mason...more
The decision by a U.S. court to continue deliberating the major lawsuit filed by several visual artists against Generative Artificial Intelligence platforms could call into question how these platforms can operate without...more
Since the release and popularization of platforms such as Midjourney and DALL-E, the past few years have seen a staggering proliferation of art made using text-to-image models—familiarly known as “AI art.” Tens of millions of...more
Visual artists sued Google last week, alleging that Google’s AI-powered image generator, Imagen, was trained on their copyrighted content without authorization. The proposed class action asserts claims of direct copyright...more
We continue to monitor lawsuits that lie at the intersection of street art, fashion and advertising. Previous issues of Kattison Avenue and Katten Kattwalk have covered the risks that generally come with using street art on...more
While we wait for further guidance on the registrability of the art output by generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, the U.S. Copyright Office is forging ahead with new decisions that address the issue. On Dec. 11,...more
On December 11, the Review Board of the U.S. Copyright Office affirmed the refusal to register yet another AI-generated work. The decision follows the Office’s refusal to register Dr. Stephen Thaler’s A Recent Entrance to...more
The answer seems to be yes — but only when ‘authorship’ of the work can be attributed to a human. In August 2023, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that an AI-generated work “absent any guiding human...more
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest topics in technology, with businesses studying how to utilize its benefits and at least some workers wondering if smarter and cheaper AI technologies will replace them. Here...more
On August 18, 2023, the US District Court for the District of Columbia (the Court) ruled in Thaler v. Register of Copyrights that an AI-generated work “absent any guiding human hand” is not protected by copyright, explaining...more
U.S. copyright law protects human-authored expression, not works generated purely by generative AI. When a human author uses generative AI tools to create their work, the scope of copyright protection extends to the...more
On Friday, June 23, 2023, Judge Jed Rakoff issued a highly anticipated decision, permanently enjoining artist Mason Rothschild from selling “MetaBirkin” NFTs, which depict furry, digital versions of the Hermès signature...more
Not even the First Amendment could rescue VIP and its Bad Spaniels dog toy, as the US Supreme Court recently held that the Rogers threshold test for “expressive works” does not apply in trademark cases involving commercial,...more
It has been nearly thirty years since the US Supreme Court has considered whether a creative work qualifies as a transformative use under the Copyright Act. The last time was in 1994, when the Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose...more
Social media has confirmed that you don’t need to be a celebrity to profit from your own image. The right of an individual to control the economic use and exploitation of his or her identity is called the right of publicity....more
In 2018, the U.S. Copyright Office denied the registration of a 2-D work of art “A Recent Entrance into Paradise” generated by artificial intelligence (“AI”). The programmer behind the AI, Dr. Stephen Thaler, sued the...more
In early 2023, a federal jury found an opportunistic meta-artist infringed on a luxury fashion house’s iconic handbag trademark. Digital artist Mason Rothschild created 100 unique “MetaBirkin” non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”)...more
The appreciation of works of art is subjective, and rightfully so as the experience of viewing art, and what it makes one feel is personal. This seems to guarantee that no artist or piece is left out of the realm of...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently affirmed dismissal of a trademark infringement lawsuit against the producers of MTV Floribama Shore in MGFB Properties, Inc. v. Viacom Inc., 54 F.4th 670...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) recently issued a precedential decision clarifying the circumstances under which an artist can obtain a trademark registration...more