Copyright Archives - Page 2 of 39 - Barry Sookman

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Copyright

Generative AI Copyright Report from U.S. Office Revealed

Copyright and AI

The U.S. Copyright Office just released a “pre-publication” version of its series on AI and Copyright. The Register of Copyrights pre-publication report, entitled, Generative AI Training, contained the statement that it was “released in response to congressional inquiries and expressions of interest from stakeholders. A final version will be published in the near future, without any substantive changes expected in the analysis or conclusions.”

The draft report (summarized here) has some controversial opinions on AI training and copyright infringement including about how Generative AI systems are trained, what acts involved in training may implicate the reproduction right, what parts of a work contain protectable expression, whether training AI systems is transformative, how the fair use factors should be applied including how factor four (effect of the market) should be applied, and how to weigh the public interest with fair use factors.…

ALAI Canada Copyright Year in Review

Copyright Lawyer Insights from the ALAI 2025 Copyright Year in Review

Copyright lawyers and copyright lovers: I once again presented the “Copyright Year in Review” to ALAI Canada.

This year had some particularly interesting caselaw developments including cases on copyright subsistence and ownership, infringement, defenses and remedies. As in prior years, there were also a few questionable holdings by courts around the country.

My 2024-2025 Copyright Year in Review presentation is available below. It has yellow colored highlights on the portions of the cases I focused on during my talk to AlAI Canada copyright lawyer members.…

Thaler and AI copyright

AI
Copyright

AI copyright and human authorship: Thaler v Perlmutter

Content generated entirely using artificial intelligence and with no human control over the expression generated cannot be protected by copyright. In short, an author must be a human being. This unsurprising conclusion was confirmed again by a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Thaler v Permultter No. 23-5233 (D.C. Cir. March 18, 2025). In reaching its conclusion, the court acknowledged that content created using AI systems may be protected by copyright, but did not address where the line should be drawn as to what level of human authorship must exist for a work to be protected or the scope of protection to be given to a work created with the aid of an AI system.…

AI
Copyright

Understanding the Copyrightability of AI: Insights from the U.S. Copyright Office

The United States Copyright Office released its second report dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright. The report, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2: Copyrightability, unsurprising, concludes that copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements. However, and consistent with copyright law, it concluded that copyright can subsist in generative AI outputs that contain copies of inputs that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as where persons take AI-generated outputs and select, arrange, coordinate, or modify them to meet the threshold requirements of originality.…

Copyright AI Barry sookman

Copyright AI: Understanding Substantive Legal Developments

I had the pleasure of speaking yesterday at the Law Society of Ontario’s 29th Intellectual Property Law Program: The year in Review. I was speaking on a panel “Artificial Intelligence: Substantive Legal Developments in Copyright Claims” along with Sana Halwani.

Program can be found @ https://lnkd.in/g4nBXHQr.

My slides can be accessed below.…

Raw Story vf OpenAI

Copyright Management Information: Insights from Raw Story v OpenAI

OpenAI scored a major success in a recent case in which Raw Story Media, Inc. and AlterNet Media, Inc lost a motion to dismiss their case alleging that OpenAI’s removal of copyright management information (CMI) from thousands of articles prior to using them to train its ChatGPT product violated Section 1202(b)(i) of the DMCA. In dismissing the case, the court relied on the U.S. requirement to establish Article III Standing (that the injury must be “concrete and particularized” and “actual or imminent”).…

Laion data set and copyright

TDM Exceptions and Copyright: A German Court Decision

Is the creation of a dataset that can be used to train generative AI systems (GenAI systems) an infringement of copyright? According to a recent decision of a German court, the activity may be covered by the text and data mining (TDM) exception in Articles 3 and 4 of the Digital Single Market Directive (EU) 2019/790. The decision is an important one. However, it leaves many questions unanswered including whether using such a dataset for training a GenAI system would be infringing.…

Sookman copyright speech

Copyright

Copyright and Supreme Court Canada: A Century of Evolution

I had the pleasure of speaking earlier this week at the ALAI Centennial Symposium marking the hundredth anniversary of the coming into force of the Copyright Act. To celebrate this anniversary, ALAI Canada brought together experts in the field to express their views on the evolution of copyright law and, more importantly, on the challenges the future brings.

My topic was the role of the judiciary. I spoke about influential decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada focusing on the court’s approach to deciding copyright cases.…

Blacklock's Reporter

Understanding subscription licenses, fair dealing and legal protection for TPMs in Canada: A critical commentary of the Blacklock’s Reporter Parks Canada decision

The Federal Court issued another troubling copyright decision involving Blacklock’s Reporter (BR) in the recent case, 1395804 Ontario Ltd, operating as Blacklock’s Reporter v AG Canada, 2024 FC 829. In reasons that are very difficult to follow and untangle, Justice Roy of the Federal Court held that Parks Canada did not infringe copyright or breach the Copyright Act’s legal protection of technological protection measures by circulating copies of articles and passwords to locked articles published by BR.

The Blacklock’s Reporter decision is riddled with mistakes.…

Copyright and AI

ISED has now published the submissions to the consultation on generative AI and copyright. The consultation focused on the impacts of recent developments in generative AI on the creative industries and considered whether changes are necessary to appropriately balance copyright and technological developments for an evolving Canadian economy. The submissions can be accessed at this link.

Here is how ChatGPT summarized the submissions on the issue as to whether a text and data mining exception should be introduced into Canadian law.

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