Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday season, a beloved time of the year where family and friends gather over delicious meals to share and create memories and to express love and gratitude. Thanksgiving also commences the...more
In a relatively scathing opinion finding the plaintiffs’ Complaint “defective in numerous respects,” a district court judge has thrown out most of the claims a group of artists has asserted against AI platforms that allegedly...more
President Biden signed a comprehensive Executive Order addressing AI regulation across a wide range of industries and issues. Intellectual property is a key focus. The Order calls on the U.S. Copyright Office and U.S. Patent...more
11/2/2023
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Biden Administration ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Copyright Office ,
Executive Orders ,
Intellectual Property Litigation ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Machine Learning ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patents ,
Risk Mitigation ,
USPTO
On September 15th 2023, Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law an amendment to the New York Labor Law. The amendment adds a new Section 203-f to the Labor Law, which addresses the assignment of inventions made by employees....more
11/1/2023
/ Copyright ,
Employee Inventors ,
Employees ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Contract ,
Employment Policies ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Inventions ,
New York ,
Ownership of Works ,
Private Right of Action ,
State Labor Laws ,
Trademarks
The latest briefing in Silverman v. OpenAI reads like that old REM song, “The End of the World as We Know It.” OpenAI has responded to the Plaintiffs’ claims that OpenAI’s popular platform ChatGPT has infringed their...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In May 2023, music and entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, through his company, Combs Wines and Spirits LLC, commenced a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court alleging that Diageo North America, a...more
10/12/2023
/ Arbitration ,
Brand ,
Breach of Contract ,
Distributors ,
Diversity and Inclusion Standards (D&I) ,
Equal Opportunities ,
Joint Venture ,
Motion to Compel ,
NY Supreme Court ,
Race Discrimination ,
Wine & Alcohol
We’ve all heard about so-called AI “hallucinations,” when AI programs like ChatGPT make up “facts” that are not true. For example, lawyers have gotten in trouble for citing fake AI-generated court cases. But could the...more
As we’ve previously written, the rise of generative AI has led to a spate of copyright suits across the country. One major target of these suits has been OpenAI. Actor/comedian Sarah Silverman and author Paul Tremblay are...more
10/2/2023
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Authorship ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
DMCA ,
Fair Use ,
Innovative Technology ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Machine Learning ,
Ownership of Works ,
Vicarious Liability
In what appears to be the first court opinion to weigh in on the copyrightability of AI-generated art, the District of D.C. has blessed the Copyright Office’s position to date: only works created by humans deserve protection...more
Several U.S. courts are addressing lawsuits brought by artists alleging that AI-generated art infringes on copyrights held by the artists for their artwork. In one of those cases, a California federal judge recently indicated...more
We previously wrote about the widely-publicized Southern District of New York case involving lawyers who submitted papers citing non-existent cases generated by the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT, Mata v. Avianca,...more
6/28/2023
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Client Services ,
Commercial Litigation ,
Ethics ,
Innovative Technology ,
Legal Operations ,
Legal Project Management ,
Legal Research ,
Legal Technology ,
Machine Learning ,
Model Rules ,
Popular ,
Rules of Professional Conduct ,
Young Lawyers
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 23, 2023, majority decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, Case No. 22-105 requires a stay of district court litigation if a party loses a motion to compel arbitration and pursues the right of...more
6/28/2023
/ Arbitration ,
Arbitration Agreements ,
Automatic Stay ,
Coinbase ,
Coinbase Inc v Bielski ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Federal Arbitration Act ,
Griggs v Provident Disc Co ,
Interlocutory Appeals ,
Motion to Compel ,
SCOTUS ,
Stays
You may have recently seen press reports about lawyers who filed and submitted papers to the federal district court for the Southern District of New York that included citations to cases and decisions that, as it turned out,...more
There is a little-known provision of the Lanham Act (the US Trademark Act) that packs a potentially big punch. 15 USC § 1051(e) provides that if a non-U.S. entity registers for a trademark in the United States without...more
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S., aka Halkbank v. United States. This groundbreaking case represents the first known attempt by the United States (or likely any state in modern...more
As we’ve previously written, complications arise for foreign sovereigns (States) and private companies when they structure commercial transactions. States prefer to hold as much of their immunities as is possible, while...more
The Second Circuit on August 5 clarified the standard for attachment in aid of arbitration – in this case an international arbitration and assets of a Lebanese bank held in New York. In Iraq Telecom Limited v. IBL Bank...more
As we’ve previously written , 28 U.S.C. § 1782 is a useful federal statute that allows overseas litigants to obtain discovery through U.S. federal courts for use in the overseas litigation. With respect to adjudication of...more
The Contracting Parties to the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) on June 24, 2022, announced their agreement in principle on the modernization of the ECT. Part of the agreement “confirm[s] that an investor from a Contracting Party...more
On June 17, 2022, the Texas Supreme Court affirmed a lower appellate court’s decision, (which we previously wrote about here), which nixed the plaintiff’s $740 million trade secret win at trial and required the plaintiff to...more
The federal statute 28 U.S.C. §1782 allows litigants in a foreign proceeding to obtain discovery in the United States, under the broad US discovery rules, for use in such proceedings. Although Section 1782’s use has been...more
A federal court in Texas recently provided useful insights on what constitutes “solicitation” by a former employee under that employee’s restrictive covenant with his former employer, and the court provided further insights...more
In recent weeks sanctions against Russia’s central bank have prompted renewed buzz around the issue of sovereign immunity. The interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), specifically with relation to...more
Welcome to the second annual installment of Seyfarth Shaw’s Commercial Litigation Outlook. Our nationally recognized team provides keen insights about what to expect in 2022. In short, it will be a busy year that will call...more
3/15/2022
/ Class Action ,
Commercial Bankruptcy ,
Commercial Court ,
Commercial Litigation ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Privacy ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Financial Services Industry ,
FinTech
Recently, a federal Special Master in the District of New Jersey addressed whether a requesting party waives its right to relevant and discoverable documents when it fails to timely follow up on the responding party’s...more