Last year the Supreme Court decided the case of Andy Warhol Foundation Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, 143 S. Ct. 1258 (2023). [Read our blog post from shortly after the decision.] The case was particularly intriguing because it involved the artwork of a famous artist (Andy Warhol) that depicted a famous musician (Prince). The court's decision [...]
Plaintiff authors sued large language model provider OpenAI and related entities for copyright infringement, alleging that plaintiffs’ books were used to train ChatGPT. Plaintiffs asserted six causes of action against various OpenAI entities: (1) direct copyright infringement, (2) vicarious infringement, (3) violation of Section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), (4) unfair competition [...]
Because ISP acted as a conduit for the transmission of material that allegedly infringed copyright, it fell under the DMCA safe harbor in 17 U.S.C. § 512(a), and therefore § 512(h) did not authorize the subpoena issued in the case. Some copyright owners needed to find out who was anonymously infringing their works, so they [...]
Plaintiff photographer sued defendant news website for copyright infringement over a photo of Ted Nugent that defendant used in an online article. The lower court granted summary judgment for defendant, finding that its use of the photo was fair use. Plaintiff sought review with the Fourth Circuit. On review, the court reversed, applying the factors set out [...]
A federal court in New York has denied the motion to dismiss filed by Chinese online platforms Alibaba and AliExpress in a lawsuit brought by a toymaker alleging that these companies’ merchant customers were engaged in contributory trademark and copyright infringement through the online sale of counterfeit products. Background of the Case Plaintiff toymaker accused [...]
If a human edits a work that an AI initially created, is the human a joint author under copyright law? U.S. copyright law (at 17 U.S.C. § 101) considers a work to be a "joint work" if it is made by two or more authors intending to mix their contributions into a single product. So, [...]
Is Andy Warhol’s Orange Prince transformative and non-infringing? The copyright bar and much of the art world has been anxiously awaiting the answer to this question since the Supreme Court decided to take up the matter. Apparently, Justices Kagan and Roberts were waiting for the same thing. Background In 1984, Andy Warhol created for Vanity [...]
