Mealey's Copyright

  • March 27, 2024

    Panel: Evidence Supports Finding That Copyright Action Was Retaliatory

    NEW YORK — A decision by a federal judge in New York to award the author of a novella upon which “Mafietta” was based $44,496.05 in attorney fees was upheld March 26 by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which said there was “a sufficient basis in the record to support” findings that a copyright infringement lawsuit by the producers of the film “was frivolous and retaliatory.”

  • March 26, 2024

    AI Prompts Are Merely ‘Copyright-Laundering Facility,’ Artists Claim

    SAN FRANCISCO — Artificial intelligence prompts used to create images are a “copyright-laundering facility designed to produce low-cost knockoffs of copyrighted images,” the plaintiffs argue in four wide-ranging oppositions to motions to dismiss filed in California federal court.

  • March 26, 2024

    Rapper To 7th Circuit: Evidence Shows His Song Was Sampled, Infringed

    CHICAGO — Hip-hop artist Eddie Lee Richardson, known professionally as Hotwire, tells the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in his opening appellant brief that a trial court erred in finding that he did not establish that French Montana’s hit 2012 song “Ain’t Worried About Nothin’” (AWAN) directly sampled and, therefore, infringed the copyright in his song “Hood Pushin Weight” (HPW).

  • March 25, 2024

    Publishers Ask 2nd Circuit To Find Internet Archive’s EBook Lending Infringing

    NEW YORK — The “wholly manufactured” practice of “controlled digital lending” in which Internet Archive (IA) digitizes books and lends them online “is radical and unlawful,” book publishers tell the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in their appellee brief, seeking affirmance of a trial court’s finding that the practice infringed their copyrights.

  • March 22, 2024

    Copyright Defendants Again Awarded Fees, This Time By 7th Circuit Panel

    CHICAGO — A little over two months after their successful defense on appeal of a $1.5 million attorney fee award from an Illinois federal judge, an investment banking company and its managing director won $260,219.25 in fees and costs incurred in the appeal, despite the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals finding that the factors for such an award are in “equipoise.”

  • March 22, 2024

    New York Times: Copyright Violations, Not Hacking, At Heart Of ChatGPT Case

    NEW YORK — OpenAI Inc. knew that ChatGPT would produce material protected by copyright, not only because of well-publicized incidents where artificial intelligences output protected works but because it was told as much and discussed the issue internally, the New York Times Co. (NYT) says in opposing a motion to dismiss.

  • March 21, 2024

    Accrediting Group Certifies 1st Large Language Model Trained On ‘Clean’ Data

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nonprofit Fairly Trained on March 20 announced certification of the first large language model (LLM) trained with a consent-based approach to data, saying the step proves that artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained while treating creators fairly and ethically.

  • March 20, 2024

    4th Circuit Stands By Contributory Copyright Liability Findings For ISP

    RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on March 19 denied dual petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel decision one month earlier that vacated a $1 billion award for vicarious copyright infringement by an internet service provider (ISP) while also upholding findings that the ISP is liable for contributory infringement.

  • March 19, 2024

    Plaintiffs Fire Back In UCL, Copyright Case Involving Google AI Training Data

    SAN FRANCISCO — Individuals enjoy a property right in their personal information, and a complaint alleges unlawful and unfair conduct sufficiently enough for claims under all three prongs of the California unfair competition law (UCL), plaintiffs in a copyright and privacy class action accusing Google LLC of “wide-scale data theft” in the training of its artificial intelligence tell a federal court in opposing dismissal.

  • March 19, 2024

    MosaicML AI Model Comes Under Fire In Authors’ Lawsuit

    SAN FRANCISCO — A trio of authors sued MosaicML, the provider of tools facilitating the training of artificial intelligence, and its parent company, claiming that they benefitted from the improper copying of potentially hundreds of thousands of copyrighted works.

  • March 15, 2024

    Panel Upholds Dismissal Of Copyright Claims Per Extraterritoriality Principle

    SAN FRANCISCO — A bid by the owner of a copyrighted widget for reinstatement of its infringement case against a foreign entity has failed at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which rejected the appellant’s assertion that a California federal judge failed to consider its claims under the correct statute.

  • March 12, 2024

    ISP Asks 4th Circuit To Rehear ‘Exceptionally Important’ Secondary Liability Suit

    RICHMOND, Va. — Filing an amicus curiae brief on March 11 in support of fellow internet service provider (ISP) Cox Communications Inc.’s quest for rehearing in an appeal where it was found liable for contributory infringement for its subscribers’ file-sharing activities, Frontier Communications Parent Inc. tells the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that a panel’s holding on copyright liability for merely providing internet service that is misused by customers “drives a wrecking ball through the ordinary limits of secondary liability in direct conflict with [U.S.] Supreme Court precedent.”

  • March 11, 2024

    Nvidia’s NeMo Megatron AI Latest LLM Targeted With Copyright Suit

    SAN FRANCISCO — Nvidia Corp. trained its NeMo Megatron artificial intelligence with 20 billion “weights” derived from an enormous amount of copyrighted and otherwise protected material, a trio of authors claims in a March 8 California federal class action targeting large language model (LLM) training methods.

  • March 11, 2024

    Copyright Office Calls Human Authorship ‘Basic Prerequisite’ In AI Copyright Suit

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — An artificial intelligence developer has not established any reason why the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals should “upend . . . well-established principles” that “nonhuman authors are not entitled to copyright protection,” the U.S. Copyright Office argues in an appellee brief, asking the court to find that a trial court properly upheld the office’s refusal to issue a copyright for a work of art to an AI machine.

  • March 08, 2024

    Pa. Federal Judge Rejects 2nd, 9th Circuit Standard For Joint Authorship Intent

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — Because it remains unclear whether a settlement agreement extends to a plaintiff’s original design for a dragon-themed boot button that, while proven to be a joint work, still may not encompass an accused “simplified, two-dimensional rendering” by an infringement defendant, a Pennsylvania federal judge largely denied summary judgment.

  • March 07, 2024

    Fee Award Slashed, But Dismissal Of Lanham Act, Copyright Claims Upheld

    SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on March 6 did not reach allegations by two appellants that the “idea-expression dichotomy” under federal copyright law is unconstitutional, deeming the position waived in view of their failure to raise it before an Oregon federal magistrate judge.

  • March 07, 2024

    X Corp. Wins Dismissal Of Most, But Not All, Copyright Claims By Music Industry

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A federal judge in Tennessee dismissed allegations that X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, directly and vicariously infringes copyrighted musical works and partly dismissed allegations of contributory infringement but said a subset of the latter claim will go forward, in view of plausible evidence that the social media giant does not go far enough to police infringement on its platform in certain situations.

  • March 06, 2024

    Michigan Federal Judge: Fish Illustrator’s Copyright Case ‘All Bait And No Hook’

    DETROIT — A federal judge in Michigan on March 5 granted dismissal of allegations that a since-shuttered, print-on-demand website incurred infringement liability when it allowed internet users to upload copyrighted illustrations of freshwater fish for printing on various merchandise.

  • March 04, 2024

    Claimed Circuit Split Over Fee Presumption In Copyright Cases Stays In Place

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Efforts by Hasbro Inc. to obtain review of a 2023 holding by the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that affirmed a denial of its request for attorney fees in a copyright case have failed, with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 4 denying the gamemaker’s petition for writ of certiorari.

  • March 04, 2024

    3 More Media Outlets Launch Copyright Actions Over Artificial Intelligence

    NEW YORK — Three media outlets filed two new lawsuits in New York federal court targeting OpenAI Inc. and related entities associated with the use of copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence ChatGPT-4.

  • March 01, 2024

    Denial Of Fee Request In Copyright Case Affirmed By 11th Circuit Panel

    ATLANTA — “Even if” a prevailing copyright infringement defendant preserved its argument that an award of fees on its behalf was mandated under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 by a copyright owner’s voluntary dismissal of the case, an award is not warranted because the defendant is not a “prevailing party” under federal copyright law, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled.

  • February 20, 2024

    COMMENTARY: Diverging International Approaches To The Copyrightability And Authorship Of AI-Created Works

    By Christopher W. Savage and James Rosenfeld

  • February 29, 2024

    OpenAI Says New York Times Used ChatGPT Hack To Produce Copyrighted Work

    NEW YORK — The New York Times Co. (NYT) — using a known bug — hacked ChatGPT, and tens of thousands of attempts tricked it into producing “highly anomalous results” that it now uses as the basis for a copyright suit, the company behind the artificial intelligence tells a federal judge in New York in seeking dismissal of the suit.

  • February 29, 2024

    9th Circuit Says Zillow Entitled To Fees But Questions Amount Requested

    SAN FRANCISCO — In a one-page order issued Feb. 28, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with Zillow Inc. that an award of fees for its successful defense of a Washington federal judge’s dismissal of copyright infringement litigation is warranted.

  • February 28, 2024

    6th Circuit Finds No Abuse Of Discretion In Award Of Disgorged Profits

    CINCINNATI — A copyright dispute between two providers of loyalty certificates issued to car buyers was properly resolved in favor of the plaintiff, and an Ohio federal judge’s subsequent decision to order a defendant to disgorge $441,239 in profits attributed to the use of the infringing certificate will not be disturbed, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled.