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
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
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
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
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
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
On March 28th, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, a case involving the core issues around copyright fair use. The case involves a series of Warhol drawings and silkscreen prints adapted...more
China, like the United States, is a party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. As such, in general any literary or artistic work created in the US will also be protected in China....more
Question: What do the Oslo Picasso murals “The Seagull” and the “The Fishermen” and the Dutch De View Jaargetijden have in common? Answer: They both have been subject to recent high cost, high profile litigation that...more
G&M Realty (G&M), the owner of the famous New York City graffiti space known as 5Pointz, asked the Supreme Court to strike down as unconstitutional the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), a federal copyright law that provides...more
Another copyright infringement lawsuit has been filed by an artist after a mural appeared in advertising, this time in a dispute involving a cannabis company. Diana Perez created a street mural titled “Besties” in the...more