The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet sue OpenAI for copyright infringement; The Guardian, February 28, 2024

Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian ; The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet sue OpenAI for copyright infringement

"OpenAI and Microsoft are facing a fresh round of lawsuits from news publishers over allegations that their generative artificial intelligence products violated copyright laws and illegally trained by using journalists’ work. Three progressive US outlets – the Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet – filed suits in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, demanding compensation from the tech companies.

The news outlets claim that the companies in effect plagiarized copyright-protected articles to develop and operate ChatGPT, which has become OpenAI’s most prominent generative AI tool. They allege that ChatGPT was trained not to respect copyright, ignores proper attribution and fails to notify users when the service’s answers are generated using journalists’ protected work."

Complaint: New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI, December 2023

 Complaint:

THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY Plaintiff,

v.

MICROSOFT CORPORATION, OPENAI, INC., OPENAI LP, OPENAI GP, LLC, OPENAI, LLC, OPENAI OPCO LLC, OPENAI GLOBAL LLC, OAI CORPORATION, LLC, and OPENAI HOLDINGS, LLC,

Defendants

The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work; The New York Times, December 27, 2023

 Michael M. Grynbaum and Ryan Mac, The New York Times; The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work

"The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times."

AI is learning from stolen intellectual property. It needs to stop.; The Washington Post, October 19, 2023

William D. Cohan , The Washington Post; AI is learning from stolen intellectual property. It needs to stop.

"The other day someone sent me the searchable database published by Atlantic magazine of more than 191,000 e-books that have been used to train the generative AI systems being developed by Meta, Bloomberg and others. It turns out that four of my seven books are in the data set, called Books3. Whoa.

Not only did I not give permission for my books to be used to generate AI products, but I also wasn’t even consulted about it. I had no idea this was happening. Neither did my publishers, Penguin Random House (for three of the books) and Macmillan (for the other one). Neither my publishers nor I were compensated for use of my intellectual property. Books3 just scraped the content away for free, with Meta et al. profiting merrily along the way. And Books3 is just one of many pirated collections being used for this purpose...

This is wholly unacceptable behavior. Our books are copyrighted material, not free fodder for wealthy companies to use as they see fit, without permission or compensation. Many, many hours of serious research, creative angst and plain old hard work go into writing and publishing a book, and few writers are compensated like professional athletes, Hollywood actors or Wall Street investment bankers. Stealing our intellectual property hurts."

Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg in latest AI copyright clash; Reuters, October 18, 2023

Blake Brittain, Reuters ; Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg in latest AI copyright clash

"A group of writers including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and best-selling Christian author Lysa TerKeurst have filed a lawsuit in New York federal court that accuses Meta (META.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Bloomberg of using their work to train artificial intelligence systems without permission.

The proposed class-action copyright lawsuit filed on Tuesday said that the companies used the controversial "Books3" dataset, which the writers said contains thousands of pirated books, to teach their large language models how to respond to human prompts."

Franzen, Grisham and Other Prominent Authors Sue OpenAI; The New York Times, September 20, 2023

 Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times; Franzen, Grisham and Other Prominent Authors Sue OpenAI

"A group of prominent novelists, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand, are joining the legal battle against OpenAI over its chatbot technology, as fears about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on creative industries continue to grow.

More than a dozen authors filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Tuesday, accusing the company, which has been backed with billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft, of infringing on their copyrights by using their books to train its popular ChatGPT chatbot. The complaint, which was filed along with the Authors Guild, said that OpenAI’s chatbots can now produce “derivative works” that can mimic and summarize the authors’ books, potentially harming the market for authors’ work, and that the writers were neither compensated nor notified by the company."

Another group of writers is suing OpenAI over copyright claims; The Verge, September 11, 2023

Emma Roth , The Verge; Another group of writers is suing OpenAI over copyright claims

"A group of writers is suing OpenAI over claims the company illegally used their works to train its AI ChatGPT chatbot, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a lawsuit filed on Friday, Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman allege OpenAI benefits and profits from the “unauthorized and illegal use” of their copyrighted content.

The lawsuit is seeking class-action status and calls out ChatGPT’s ability to summarize and analyze the content written by the authors, stating this “is only possible” if OpenAI trained its GPT large language model on their works. It adds that these outputs are actually “derivative” works that infringe on their copyrights."

Microsoft to defend customers on AI copyright challenges; Reuters, September 7, 2023

Reuters ; Microsoft to defend customers on AI copyright challenges

"Microsoft (MSFT.O) will pay legal damages on behalf of customers using its artificial intelligence (AI) products if they are sued for copyright infringement for the output generated by such systems, the company said on Thursday.

Microsoft will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks arising out of any claims raised by third parties so long as the company's customers use "the guardrails and content filters" built into its products, the company said. It offers functionality meant to reduce the likelihood that the AI returns infringing content."

UN agency finds US, Asian companies seek most AI patents; Associated Press, January 31, 2019

Associated Press; UN agency finds US, Asian companies seek most AI patents

"The U.N.’s intellectual property organization says companies in Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are the top filers of patent applications involving artificial intelligence.

The World Intellectual Property Organization has issued a first report aiming to show trends in AI, seen as a growth area in coming years, although still a tiny fraction of all patent applications each year.

WIPO said Thursday that machine learning is the dominant AI technique disclosed in patents."

IBM Will Acquire Open-Source Software Company Red Hat In $34 Billion Deal; October 28, 2018

Laurel Wamsley, NPR; IBM Will Acquire Open-Source Software Company Red Hat In $34 Billion Deal

"In what may be the most significant tech acquisition of the year, IBM says it will acquire open-source software company Red Hat for approximately $34 billion...

"The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer said in a statement. "This is the next chapter of the cloud."

Raleigh, N.C.–based Red Hat makes software for the open-source Linux operating system, an alternative to proprietary software made by Microsoft. It sells features and support on a subscription basis to its corporate customers...

Microsoft completed its $7.5 billion acquisition of open source software company GitHub just two days ago."

Microsoft open-sources its patent portfolio; ZDNet, October 10, 2018

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet; Microsoft open-sources its patent portfolio

"Several years ago, I said the one thing Microsoft has to do -- to convince everyone in open source that it's truly an open-source supporter -- is stop using its patents against Android vendors. Now, it's joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), an open-source patent consortium. Microsoft has essentially agreed to grant a royalty-free and unrestricted license to its entire patent portfolio to all other OIN members.

Before Microsoft joined, OIN had more than 2,650 community members and owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications. OIN is the largest patent non-aggression community in history and represents a core set of open-source intellectual-property values. Its members include Google, IBM, Red Hat, and SUSE. The OIN patent license and member cross-licenses are available royalty-free to anyone who joins the OIN community."

IBM settles legal dispute with diversity officer hired by Microsoft; IBM, March 5, 2018

Jan Wolfe, Reuters; IBM settles legal dispute with diversity officer hired by Microsoft

"International Business Machines Corp on Monday said it settled a trade secrets lawsuit it brought against its former chief diversity officer who left for a similar job at Microsoft Corp.

The settlement allows Lindsay-Rae McIntyre to begin working at Microsoft in July."

Dannon Defector to Chobani Ignites Yogurt Trade Secrets Battle; Bloomberg Business, February 21, 2018

Chris Dolmetsch, 

Bloomberg Business; Dannon Defector to Chobani Ignites Yogurt Trade Secrets Battle

"Federico Muyshondt is accused of stealing details of Dannon’s business strategies, plans for future products and customer lists before resigning in January to take a position with Chobani, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in White Plains, New York.

The suit illustrates how competitive the yogurt business has become and highlights the proliferation in the corporate world of non-compete clauses in workers’ contracts that restrain them from going to work for rival employers. Just last week, International Business Machines Corp. called foul on Microsoft Corp.’s hiring of its former chief diversity officer in a case that elevated the recruiting and promotion of a diverse workforce to the level of protecting proprietary technology."

IBM-Microsoft Spat Elevates Diversity to Tech-Secret Level; Bloomberg, February 12, 2018

Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg; IBM-Microsoft Spat Elevates Diversity to Tech-Secret Level

"“McIntyre was at the center of highly confidential and competitively sensitive information that has fueled IBM’s success” in diversity and inclusion, the company said in a statement. “While we understand Microsoft’s need to deal with mounting criticism of its record on diversity, IBM intends to fully enforce Ms. McIntyre’s non-compete agreement to protect our competitive information.”

In its complaint, filed Monday in federal court in White Plains, New York, IBM pointed to Microsoft’s own attempts to keep details about its diversity efforts secret.

IBM’s diversity-related trade secrets aren’t valuable to Microsoft and McIntyre wouldn’t be able to use them in her new role, her attorneys said."

To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software; New York Times, August 3, 2017

R. James Woolsey and Brian J. Fox, New York Times; To Protect Voting,Use Open-Source Software

"If the community of proprietary vendors, including Microsoft, would support the use of open-source model for elections, we could expedite progress toward secure voting systems.

With an election on the horizon, it’s urgent that we ensure that those who seek to make our voting systems more secure have easy access to them, and that Mr. Putin does not."

Chasing Pirates: Inside Microsoft’s War Room; New York Times, 11/7/10

Ashlee Vance, New York Times; Chasing Pirates: Inside Microsoft’s War Room:

"The arrival of organized criminal syndicates to the software piracy scene has escalated worries at companies like Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe. Groups in China, South America and Eastern Europe appear to have supply chains and sales networks rivaling those of legitimate businesses, says David Finn, Microsoft’s anti-piracy chief. Sometimes they sell exact copies of products, but often peddle tainted software that opens the door to other electronic crime."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/technology/07piracy.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=piracy%20microsoft&st=cse

IT experts call for crackdown on copyright piracy; Daily Star (Lebanon), 12/16/09

Dana Halawi, Daily Star (Lebanon); IT experts call for crackdown on copyright piracy:

"Information Technology (IT) experts gathered on Tuesday at Ramada Hotel in Beirut to tackle challenges facing Lebanon’s IT industry due to lack of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection. “One of the main challenges facing this sector in Lebanon is the absence of effective entities tailored to the protection of IPR. This includes the challenge of issuing laws by the Lebanese government that are compatible with the international agreements signed by Lebanon for its accession to the World Trade Organization,” said Microsoft’s anti-piracy manager for North Africa, Eastern Mediterranean and Pakistan Aly Harakeh.

Respecting intellectual property rights is one of the basic conditions of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Lebanon is a signatory to several international agreements relating to intellectual property rights and started the process for accession to the WTO in 1999, but could not join because of its failure to properly implement the basic required conditions. The country’s accession application is still ongoing, according to the WTO website...

Sectors dependant on intellectual innovations are crucial to the Lebanese economy. Lebanon is on the top of Arab countries when it comes to intellectual innovations and arts, and these sectors can contribute a lot more to our economy than the core industries such as agriculture and manufacturing.

According to a report issued by the Institute of Finance, the industries in Lebanon which copyright applies to contribute 4.74 percent to GDP and 4.54 percent to employment. However, the report said, the core industries contribute 2.53 percent to GDP and 2.11 percent to employment.

The study said that the industries which copyright laws apply to generated $555.52 million of value added, generated from nine sectors including press and literature, music, theatrical productions, opera, motion pictures and video, radio and television, photography, software and databases, visual and graphic arts, advertising and copyright collecting societies.

A report issued by the Business Software Alliance said that the piracy rates in Lebanon reached 74 percent in 2008, while losses incurred from piracy activities reached $49 million in the same year."

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=3&article_id=109830

Chinese Authors Turn up Heat on Google Over Book Scanning; PC World, 11/19/09

Owen Fletcher, PC World; Chinese Authors Turn up Heat on Google Over Book Scanning:

A Chinese authors' group late Wednesday demanded Google compensate writers whose books the U.S. company scanned without permission.

"A Chinese authors' group demanded late Wednesday that Google compensate writers whose books the U.S. company scanned without permission, cranking up tension in the country over Google's digital library project.

The demand marked the second time in just days that a U.S. company came under fire in China for intellectual property violations. A Chinese court this week ruled that Microsoft's use of certain Chinese fonts violated a local company's intellectual property rights and ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of its operating system containing the fonts, including Windows XP.

The Chinese Authors Society demanded that Google present a resolution plan by the end of the year and quickly handle compensation for Chinese authors whose books the U.S. company scanned without permission. A local copyright protection group, co-founded by the authors group, has said it found at least 17,000 Chinese works included in Google's scanning plan...

Legal action by Chinese companies to protect their intellectual property rights is increasingly common, but piracy remains widespread in the country. Pirated books, DVDs and computer programs such as Windows 7 are widely sold in bazaars and on street corners."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/182559/chinese_authors_turn_up_heat_on_google_over_book_scanning.html

Google Books debate gets personal; Tech Chronicles, 11/17/09

James Temple, Tech Chronicles; Google Books debate gets personal:

"The increasingly acrimonious squabble over the Google Books legal settlement has officially slid past that threshold -- all too familiar during heated political campaigns -- where the debate becomes about the debate.

The Open Book Alliance issued a statement today complaining not about the terms of the revised settlement offering -- that press release was yesterday -- but about how Google rudely backed out of an opportunity to publicly wrangle over those terms. And how that means they're hiding things.

First, Google released the settlement's details at the witching hour of midnight on Friday. Then last night, Google refused to address the facts behind the book settlement on a widely respected national television news program.

Google continues to say they would like to have an open discussion on the merits of their revised settlement. However, the only discussions about the settlement seem to be occurring behind the closed doors of the company's Mountain View, Calif. campus.

According to TechCrunch, Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy had agreed to appear on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to debate the topic with Harvard professor Robert Darnton. With little notice, however, Silicon Valley attorney Gary Reback was added to the line up.

Reback spearheaded the antitrust crusade against Microsoft last decade and, by the way, co-chairs the Open Books Alliance, whose members include Google competitors Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon.com.

Apparently Google didn't want an engineer to spar with a lawyer on national television, which doesn't seem as unreasonable to us as the incredulous tone of the Open Books Alliance statement would have one think.

As in politics, focusing on these sorts of trivial matters becomes a convenient stand in for the issues themselves because, of course, those issues are incredibly complex.

Besides, it's easier to incite consumer emotions by saying a massive company is hiding from a public debate than by explaining that, say, Open Books Alliance member Amazon.com is worried about how the deal will affect their own dominance over the book industry."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=51855#ixzz0XDgJfxXd

Microsoft calls Google Books deal 'misuse' of the law; Guardian, 9/9/09

Bobbie Johnson via Guardian; Microsoft calls Google Books deal 'misuse' of the law:

"Google's battle to digitise millions of copyrighted books has taken another blow, after rival technology giant Microsoft lodged a brief with an American court that called the proposals "illegitimate".

In the filing delivered to the southern district court of New York - which is examining the proposed $125m deal that would give Google the right to digitise millions of in-copyright books - Microsoft called the scheme "an unprecedented misuse of the judicial system"...

Echoing arguments made by other critics, including Amazon and European regulators, the Seattle software giant added a scathing rebuttal of Google's deal.

"A class action settlement is the wrong mechanism, this court is the wrong venue and monopolisation is the wrong means to carry out the worthy goal of digitising and increasing the accessibility of books.""

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/09/google-books-microsoft