Friday’s Endnotes – 10/18/24

Joseph Saveri Law Firm, Co-Counsel File 9th Circuit Appeal in Lawsuit Targeting GitHub’s Use of Code to Train AI Models — “Plaintiffs counsel in Doe v. GitHub, which is widely considered to be the first lawsuit to challenge companies’ use of copyrighted materials to train generative artificial intelligence models, on Tuesday filed a new petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The appeal questions whether liability under §1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is limited to the ‘removal or alteration of Copyright Management Information from an identical copy of a work.'”

German Supreme Court Rules Against Photographer in Landmark Wallpaper Copyright Case — “The court dismissed Böhme’s appeals from lower courts, ruling that while yes, the plaintiff owned the copyright to the pictures featured on the wallpapers, and that taking photographs of the wallpaper essentially made the copyrighted work available to the public in a way, the plaintiff had granted implied consent to specific expected and anticipated uses of their work, including photographs of the wallpaper. When a right holder makes work available without restriction, some types of usage should be expected says the German Supreme Court.”

The Heart of the Matter: Copyright, AI Training, and LLMs — “The recent article The Heart of the Matter: Copyright, AI Training, and LLMs, forthcoming in the Journal of the Copyright Society, explains how copyright and AI intersect. It addresses several key areas of the relationship between copyright and generative AI, discussing the way copies are made and used in LLMs, the significant copyright liability issues that can arise from these uses, and the inconsistent international landscape, which is subject to court decisions in dozens of ongoing cases. The article finds that licensing is a logical solution to these challenges, with direct and voluntary collective licensing both playing important roles in enabling copyright owners and users to work together and innovate.”

Ramaphosa sends ‘atrocious’ copyright bill to Constitutional Court — “[South Africa] President Cyril Ramaphosa has for the second time had qualms about signing the Copyright Amendment Bill and Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill into law and has sent them to the Constitutional Court. Copyright legal experts and artists have consistently opposed the copyright bill, which they say intrudes on property rights and the right to trade.”

Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff — “PRH is believed to be the first of the Big Five anglophone trade publishers to amend its copyright information to reflect the acceleration of AI systems and the alleged reliance by tech companies on using published work to train language models.”