The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has affirmed a district court ruling that human authorship is a bedrock requirement to register a copyright, and that an artificial intelligence system cannot be deemed the...more
On March 6, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York confirmed that historical events are not subject to copyright protection....more
Does copyright law require that a human create a work? Yesterday the D.C. Circuit in Thaler v. Perlmutter held that it does and that a machine (such as a computer operating a generative AI program) cannot be designated as the...more
The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) products in the past couple of years has significantly increased the capacity for individuals, businesses, and organisations to utilise AI to produce a wide range of...more
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the film and television industry in content creation raises many legal and business issues. One key issue is the ownership of the works generated using AI and the ability to register...more
In response to the increased use of sophisticated artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies capable of producing expressive material, the U.S. Copyright Office (“CO”) published a two-part series on the copyrightability of...more
Earlier this week, a federal judge rejected an AI startup's claim that using copyrighted material to train its AI system was permissible under the fair use doctrine. The decision—Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross...more
Recently, a federal court issued the first ruling on the closely watched issue of fair use in copyright infringement involving AI. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff on its direct infringement claim, and ruled that the...more
Last week, the United States Copyright Office (“USCO”) released its long-anticipated report on the copyrightability of works created with the aid of artificial intelligence (“AI”). The report did not break new ground by...more
After several months of delays, the U.S. Copyright Office has published part two of its three-part report on the copyright issues raised by artificial intelligence (AI). This part, entitled “Copyrightability,” focuses on...more
On January 29, 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office released its highly anticipated report (the Report) regarding the copyrightability of works created using generative artificial intelligence (AI). The Report concluded that...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that reprinting foreign law cannot be an infringement of US copyright law. Canadian Standards Association v. P.S. Knight Co., Ltd., Case No. 23-50081 (5th Cir. July 16, 2024)...more
On April 6, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed Judge Gilstrap’s ruling in SAS Institute, Inc. v. World Programming Limited, which effectively denied copyright protection to SAS Institute’s data...more
Typically, Godzilla and other kaiju (Japanese for “strange beast” and also referring to a genre of fiction involving giant monsters) use their armored skin, massive size, and superpowers to protect themselves against almost...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s order vacating a jury award of damages for copyright infringement and granting judgment as a matter of law, explaining that the musical work alleged to...more
In a recent decision from the Second Circuit, Judges Parker, Chin, and Carney side-stepped a novel question: whether human skin can be the kind of "tangible medium of expression" required for copyright protection. Instead,...more
Three years ago, the Supreme Court announced a seemingly simple separability test for determining whether features of a useful article are eligible for copyright protection in the landmark decision Star Athletica v. Varsity...more
In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, decided by the Supreme Court on April 27, the principle at stake was whether, under the copyright law, a state legislature can have the rights of an “author” in publishing an annotated...more
Lanard Toys Limited v. Dolgencorp LLC, Ja-Ru, Inc., and Toys “R” US - Before Lourie, Mayer, and Wallach. Appeal from the District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Summary: A useful article is not copyrightable...more
On April 27, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the annotations found in Georgia’s official state law code—Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA)—are ineligible for copyright protection. Georgia et...more
The law – judicial opinions, statutes, and regulations – cannot be copyrighted. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., No.18-1150 (April 21, 2020), the US Supreme Court was presented with the question whether annotations,...more
On April 27, the Supreme Court took us on a stroll down memory lane in its decision in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., referring us back to its very first copyright case and revisiting the government edicts doctrine for...more
Last week, the Supreme Court held in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., that legislators cannot copyright any works that they created in the course of their official duties. Though the holding may appear straightforward...more
On April 27, 2020, the United States Supreme Court held that annotations in the State of Georgia’s official codes are not eligible for copyright protection. The 5-4 decision marked the first time in over a century that the...more
Revisiting the government edicts doctrine for the first time in more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., No. 18–1150, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), split 5-4 to hold that annotations to...more