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
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
With regards to popular or unique quality clothing styles, imitation often occurs. For such imitation, it is difficult to regulate from the perspective of trademark infringement, and when claiming copyright infringement, it...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
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
Luxury fashion brand Hermès sued Mason Rothschild in January 2022 alleging that the digital images underlying the non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) produced and sold by Rothschild depicting faux fur-covered Birkin handbags – the...more
In a closely watched trademark infringement case involving non-fungible tokens ("NFTs"), a jury found that the sale of digital images of Hermès's Birkin bags as NFTs infringed and diluted Hermès's trademarks....more
On February 8, 2023, a federal jury awarded Hermès International and Hermès of Paris, Inc. (“Hermès”) $133,000 in its trademark lawsuit against designer Mason Rothschild. Hermès sued Rothschild for selling non-fungible tokens...more
In a case with clear implications for non-fungible token art-based projects, a federal jury in the case of Hermès International, et al. v. Mason Rothschild, 1:22-cv-00384 (SDNY), found in favor of fashion brand Hermès in its...more
A nine-person jury in the Southern District of New York has found that "MetaBirkin" NFTs violate Hermès International SA's rights in its "Birkin" trademarks. This is the first trial to consider the intersection of NFTs and...more
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) serve as agile mechanisms to verify an underlying asset's authenticity and/or ownership linked with it. For now, minting NFTs to commercialize digital artwork on blockchain domain names continues to...more
Sometimes, the best place to determine whether a work qualifies as art is in a courtroom. In a recent decision, Judge John H. Chun of the District Court for the Western District of Washington found that a driving simulator...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
As the US Copyright Office notes, “Copyright exists from the moment the work is created.” More precisely, under the Copyright Act - A work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time;...more
A New York federal court has ruled that a non-fungible token (“NFT”) for a digital image similar to a Birkin handbag may be an “artistic” work for purposes of determining whether the NFT infringes the Birkin trademark and...more