Nielsen's Gracenote sues OpenAI for copyright infringement; Axios, March 10, 2026

Sara Fischer, Axios; Nielsen's Gracenote sues OpenAI for copyright infringement

"How it works: Gracenote employs hundreds of editors who use human insight and judgment to create millions of narrative descriptions, original video descriptors, unique identifiers and other program identifiers that TV providers and other clients can use to help customers discover content. 

For example, Gracenote editors described HBO's "Game of Thrones" as "the depiction of two power families — kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and honest men — playing a deadly game of control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and to sit atop the Iron Throne."

In the lawsuit, Gracenote alleges OpenAI scraped and used a near-exact copy of that descriptor when prompted by a ChatGPT user to describe "Game of Thrones." 

It provides several other examples where, with minimal prompting, OpenAI's various ChatGPT models recite large portions of Gracenote's program descriptions verbatim. 

Between the lines: Gracenote's entire Programs Database, which includes its metadata and the proprietary relational map its editors use to connect that data, is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office."

Mike Kelley vs. Trump: The Photo That Could Spark a Presidential Copyright War; Fstoppers, June 1, 2025

Patrick Hall, Fstoppers; Mike Kelley vs. Trump: The Photo That Could Spark a Presidential Copyright War

"Your Thoughts?

What do you think will happen to this case when it is filed? Obviously something like this will take years to make its way through the courts, and perhaps Trump will not even be president by the time it makes it to the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where it will most likely reside. Do you think Mike has a strong enough case for Willful Infringement under statutory infringement or because this is a meme that perhaps originated somewhere else on the internet, could it be viewed as unwilling? Do you think Trump would ever succeed at claiming his posts on Truth Social fall under official acts of a sitting president?"

Why Copyright Registration Matters; Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig PLLC via JDSupra, January 20, 2023

David Ludwig,Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig PLLC via JDSupra Why Copyright Registration Matters

"Creative works of expression are likely your most valuable assets if you are a film studio, photographer, software developer, writer, musician, or visual artist. To fully protect against copycats, you need federal copyright registration...

If you are a copyright owner and you succeed in a lawsuit, you will be entitled to recover actual damages: whatever you lost because of the infringement of your copyright. This can be a hard number to calculate.

However, if you are the owner of a registered copyright, you can choose to receive statutory damages instead of actual damages. Courts can award between $750 and $30,000 for each infringement of a copyrighted work. If the infringement was willful, meaning the defendant deliberately used your work despite knowing it was copyrighted, you can recover up to $150,000. The right choice of which type of damages to pursue will depend on whether and when you registered your copyright and how easy it is to calculate your damages.

Keep in mind that if you registered your copyright before the infringement, you will also be eligible to recover attorneys’ fees and litigation costs from the infringer."