Barry Sookman

Quebec IT Framework Act Decision Impact on Search Engines

Intermediary liability

In A.B. c. Google, 2026 QCCA 157, the Quebec Court of Appeal held that Google could incur liability under Quebec’s Act to establish a legal framework for information technology (the “IT Framework Act”) for refusing to de-index hyperlinks to defamatory content after acquiring knowledge of its unlawful character. The Court distinguished the Supreme Court’s decision in Crookes v. Newton, interpreted section 22 of the IT Framework Act as imposing obligations on intermediaries once they become aware of unlawful activity, and upheld a de-indexing injunction limited to Quebec.…

AI and copyright

Copyright in AI Prompts: Chinese Court Ruling on Generative AI and Originality

The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence has raised fundamental questions about whether prompts used to instruct AI systems can attract copyright protection. Courts worldwide are now beginning to address a variety of questions related to AI and copyright and have started to examine whether AI prompts constitute original works or merely unprotectable ideas or other subject matter. A recent case, Chengdu Cultural Communication Co., Ltd v Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. 2025) Hu 0101 Min Chu No. 14775 (November 6, 2025),[i] examined this question in considering whether copyright is capable of subsisting in prompts submitted to an image generative artificial intelligence system (a “GenAI system”).…

E-23 Guideline

OSFI E-23 Guideline and Its Impact on Financial Institutions

Introduction

The regulatory landscape related to artificial intelligence continues to evolve. For regulated entities like Canadian banks and insurance companies and their foreign affiliates, for federally regulated credit unions, and for Canadian affiliates of foreign banks and insurance operating in Canada (“FIs”), OSFI Guideline E-23 – Model Risk Management (2027), which will come into force on May 1, 2027 (“Guideline E-23”), adds a new layer of regulatory and contracting complexity.

Contracts between service providers and FIs are already complicated because of the requirements of FIs to comply with Canadian privacy laws such as PIPEDA and privacy laws in other jurisdictions in which they operate, regulatory guidelines such as OSFI’s updated B-10 Third-Party Risk Management Guideline, OSFI’s Technology and Cyber Security Incident Reporting Advisory, and other guidance.…

Sookman popular blog

2025 Year in Review: What You (and the Algorithms) Loved Most

Intro (AI & human readers)

This year-in-review highlights the blog posts on barrysookman.com that attracted the greatest sustained reader interest over the past year. Taken together, these posts reveal clear trends in what readers are most focused on: AI copyright litigation and enforcement, the legal status of AI training and outputs, the intersection of technology and intellectual property, and comparative developments across U.S., UK, Canadian, and EU law. Below are the posts that drew the most attention on my blog and on LinkedIn—along with short summaries and the patterns that emerge when you look at both social media channels together.…

Ziff Davis v OpenAI

Ziff Davis v OpenAI: Key Copyright Litigation Ruling

In a recent decision, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litig., 2025 WL 3635559 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 15, 2025) District Court Judge Stein ruled, for the first time in AI copyright litigation, that crawling a website in violation of a robots.txs website code does not infringe the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The New York court also confirmed in a pleadings motion ruling that tenable claims (claims that can survive a pleading motion) can be made out by alleging copyright infringement in AI generated outputs, DMCA claims for intentional removal of copyright management information (CMI), and trademark dilution claims for using famous marks in generated AI output that does not contain content of the trademark owner.…

exclusive licenses, electronic signatures

Getty v Stability AI: Exclusive Copyright Licences and Clickwrap Signatures

In the prior blog posts, Copyright Infringement and AI: Insights from Getty v StabiliyAI Trademark Infringement and AI: the Getty and Cohere cases, I summarized the landmark decision in Getty Images (US) Inc v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), as it related to Stability AI’s liability for secondary copyright infringement and trademark infringement. But, the U.K. court’s decision in Getty also dealt with two other important issues related to Getty’s status to sue for copyright infringement. The first was that Getty’s licences that purposed to be exclusive under New York law did not give Getty the status to sue under the UK copyright law, the CDPA.…

OpenAI Toronto Star

OpenAI Toronto Star jurisdiction decision

An Ontario court just released an important decision refusing to dismiss a copyright, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract claims brought by the Toronto Star and other newspaper publishers against OpenAI for lack of jurisdiction. In Toronto Star Newspapers Limited v. OpenAI Inc., 2025 ONSC 6217, Justice Kimmel held that the Ontario court had subject matter jurisdiction over the claims in the proceeding and personal jurisdiction over some of the operating companies of one of the leading U.S. based generative AI companies, OpenAI.…

Getty Images v Stability AI

Trademark Infringement and AI: the Getty and Cohere cases

In a prior blog post on the landmark decision in Getty Images (US) Inc v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), I summarized the U.K. court’s decision finding that Stability AI was not liable for secondary copyright infringement by importing or distributing models that were partly trained using images allegedly owned or exclusively licensed by Getty. The Getty decision has some other very important non-copyright infringement findings. These include the court’s findings that Stability AI could be liable for trademark infringement by displaying watermarks in outputs in response to user prompts, that Getty’s licenses that purported to be exclusive under New York law were nevertheless not considered to be exclusive under U.K.’s…

Getty v Stability AI

Copyright Infringement and AI: Insights from Getty v Stability AI

In a landmark decision released yesterday in Getty Images (US) Inc v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), a United Kingdom court ruled that Stability AI was not liable for secondary copyright infringement by importing or distributing models that were partly trained using images allegedly owned or exclusively licensed by Getty. Central to the decision was the finding of Justice Joanna Smith that Stability AI’s trained models did not store copies of Getty images as required by the U.K. Copyright, Designs, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (the “CDPA”), and hence were not infringing copies, even though they may have been trained without copyright holder authorization.…

Barry Sookman Technology Law tLK

Technology Law Updates from the CAN-TECH Conference

I was pleased to speak on October 24 at the Canadian Technology Law Association (CAN-TECH) Fall Conference in Toronto. CAN-TECH is the national association representing Canadian technology lawyers. I participated in a panel alongside Catherine Lovrics (Marks & Clerk LLP) and Jenna Wilson (Wilson Lue LLP), moderated by Lisa Wallace (WeirFoulds LLP).

My talk was a follow up and update to my annual Toronto Computers Lawyers Group “Year in Review” of technology law talk. My talk covered a wide range of topics with a special focus on artificial intelligence, technology and online contracting, privacy and copyright.…

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