Showing posts with label copyright law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label copyright law. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Disney, Universal File First Major Studio Lawsuit Against AI Company, Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement: ‘This Is Theft’; Variety, June 11, 2025

 Todd Spangler, Variety; Disney, Universal File First Major Studio Lawsuit Against AI Company, Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement: ‘This Is Theft’

"Disney and NBCU filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Midjourney, a generative AI start-up, alleging copyright infringement. The companies alleged that Midjourney’s own website “displays hundreds, if not thousands, of images generated by its Image Service at the request of its subscribers that infringe Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works.”

A copy of the lawsuit is at this link...

Disney and NBCU’s lawsuit includes images alleged to be examples of instances of Midjourney’s infringement. Those include an image of Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine (pictured above), Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk and more; Star Wars’ Darth Vader, Yoda, R2-D2, C-3PO and Chewbacca; Disney’s Princess Elsa and Olaf from “Frozen”; characters from “The Simpsons”; Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear from “Toy Story” and Lightning McQueen from “Cars”; DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon”; and Universal‘s “Shrek” and the yellow Minions from the “Despicable Me” film franchise."

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Getty Images Faces Off Against Stability in Court as First Major AI Copyright Trial Begins; PetaPixel, June 10, 2025

Matt Growcoot , PetaPixel; Getty Images Faces Off Against Stability in Court as First Major AI Copyright Trial Begins

"The Guardian notes that the trial will focus on specific photos taken by famous photographers. Getty plans to bring up photos of the Chicago Cubs taken by sports photographer Gregory Shamus and photos of film director Christopher Nolan taken by Andreas Rentz. 

All-in-all, 78,000 pages of evidence have been disclosed for the case and AI experts are being called in to give testimonies. Getty is also suing Stability AI in the United States in a parallel case. The trial in London is expected to run for three weeks and will be followed by a written decision from the judge at a later date."

Monday, June 9, 2025

Newsmaker: Brewster Kahle; American Libraries, June 4, 2025

 Anne Ford, American Libraries; Newsmaker: Brewster Kahle

"How has the work of the Internet Archive been affected since Trump took office?

Well, the biggest effect has been getting a lot of attention for what we do. We spend a lot of time on Democracy’s Library, which is a name for collecting all the born-digital and digitized publications of government at the federal, state, and municipal levels. There’s been so much attention about all of the [digital] takedowns that we’ve received lots and lots of volunteer help toward collecting not only web assets but also databases that are being removed from government websites. It’s all hands on deck.

And you just launched a new YouTube channel.

Yes, we unveiled our next-generation microfiche scanning as part of our Democracy’s Library project, because a lot of .gov sites are on microfiche, and people don’t want to use microfiche anymore. Fortunately, the US government in its early era was pro–access to information and made government documents public domain. So we put out a YouTube livestream of the microfiche being digitized.

What would you like to see libraries and librarians do during this challenging time?

We need libraries to have at least as good rights in the digital world as we have in the physical world. There’s an upcoming website [from the Internet Archive and others] called the Four Digital Rights of Libraries, and that is something libraries can sign onto as institutions. [The website will launch during the Association of European Research Libraries’ LIBER 2025 Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2-4.]

People generally don’t know that libraries, in this digital era, are prevented from buying any ebooks or MP3s. They are not allowed by the publishers to have them. They spend and spend and spend, but they don’t end up owning anything. They’re not building collections. So the publishers can change or delete anything at any time, and they do. In their dream case, libraries will never own anything ever again. This is a structural attack on libraries. You don’t need to be a deep historian to know what happens to libraries. They’re actively destroyed by the powerful.

So let’s spend [our collection budgets] buying ebooks, buying music, buying material from small publishers or anybody [else] that will actually sell to us. Make it so we are building our own collections, not this licensing thing where these books disappear.

That’s a big ask. But the great thing about that will be that our libraries start buying things from small publishers, where most of the money goes back to the authors, not stopping with the big multinational publishers. Let’s build a system that works for more players than just big corporations that make a habit of suing libraries."

Getty argues its landmark UK copyright case does not threaten AI; Reuters, June 9, 2025

, Reuters; Getty argues its landmark UK copyright case does not threaten AI

 "Getty Images' landmark copyright lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI began at London's High Court on Monday, with Getty rejecting Stability AI's contention the case posed a threat to the generative AI industry.

Seattle-based Getty, which produces editorial content and creative stock images and video, accuses Stability AI of using its images to "train" its Stable Diffusion system, which can generate images from text inputs...

Creative industries are grappling with the legal and ethical implications of AI models that can produce their own work after being trained on existing material. Prominent figures including Elton John have called for greater protections for artists.

Lawyers say Getty's case will have a major impact on the law, as well as potentially informing government policy on copyright protections relating to AI."

Friday, June 6, 2025

AI firms say they can’t respect copyright. These researchers tried.; The Washington Post, June 5, 2025

Analysis by  

with research by 
, The Washington Post; AI firms say they can’t respect copyright. These researchers tried.

"A group of more than two dozen AI researchers have found that they could build a massive eight-terabyte dataset using only text that was openly licensed or in public domain. They tested the dataset quality by using it to train a 7 billion parameter language model, which performed about as well as comparable industry efforts, such as Llama 2-7Bwhich Meta released in 2023.

paper published Thursday detailing their effort also reveals that the process was painstaking, arduous and impossible to fully automate.

The group built an AI model that is significantly smaller than the latest offered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, but their findings appear to represent the biggest, most transparent and rigorous effort yet to demonstrate a different way of building popular AI tools.

That could have implications for the policy debate swirling around AI and copyright.

The paper itself does not take a position on whether scraping text to train AI is fair use.

That debate has reignited in recent weeks with a high-profile lawsuit and dramatic turns around copyright law and enforcement in both the U.S. and U.K."

 

The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore; NPR, June 6, 2025

, NPR ; The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore

"The U.S. Copyright Office is normally a quiet place. It mostly exists to register materials for copyright and advise members of Congress on copyright issues. Experts and insiders used words like "stable" and "sleepy" to describe the agency. Not anymore...

Inside the AI report

That big bombshell report on generative AI and copyright can be summed up like this – in some instances, using copyrighted material to train AI models could count as fair use. In other cases, it wouldn't.

The conclusion of the report says this: "Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market."

"It's very even keeled," said Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, a group that represents artists and publishers pushing for stronger copyright laws.

Kupferschmid said the report avoids generalizations and takes arguments on a case-by-case basis.

"Perlmutter was beloved, no matter whether you agreed with her or not, because she did the hard work," Kupferschmid said. "She always was very thoughtful and considered all these different viewpoints."

It remains to be seen how the report will be used in the dozens of legal cases over copyright and AI usage."

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Eminem Hits Meta With A Copyright Lawsuit After It Allegedly Misappropriated Hundreds Of His Songs; ABOVE THE LAW, June 4, 2025

 Chris Williams , ABOVE THE LAW; Eminem Hits Meta With A Copyright Lawsuit After It Allegedly Misappropriated Hundreds Of His Songs

"Don’t. Mess. With. Eminem. And if the events are as cut and dried as the complaint makes it seem, Meta is getting off easy with the $109M price tag. Meta of all companies should know that the only thing that can get away with brazenly stealing the work of wealthy hard-working artists without facing legal consequences is AI-scrapping software."

Monday, June 2, 2025

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

, 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?"

Sunday, June 1, 2025

U.S. Copyright Office Shocks Big Tech With AI Fair Use Rebuke; Forbes, May 29, 2025

Tor Constantino, MBA

, Forbes; U.S. Copyright Office Shocks Big Tech With AI Fair Use Rebuke

 "The U.S. Copyright Office released its long-awaited report on generative AI training and copyright infringement on May 9, just one day after President Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Within 48 hours, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter was also reportedly out, after the agency rushed to publish a “pre-publication version” of its guidance — suggesting urgency, if not outright alarm, within the office.

This timing was no coincidence. “We practitioners were anticipating this report and knew it was being finalized, but its release was a surprise,” said Yelena Ambartsumian, an AI governance and IP lawyer and founder of Ambart Law. “The fact that it dropped as a pre-publication version, the day after the librarian was fired, signals to me that the Copyright Office expected its own leadership to be next.”

At the center of the report is a sharply contested issue: whether using copyrighted works to train AI models qualifies as “fair use.” And the office’s position is a bold departure from the narrative that major AI companies like OpenAI and Google have relied on in court...

The office stopped short of declaring that all AI training is infringement. Instead, it emphasized that each case must be evaluated on its specific facts — a reminder that fair use remains a flexible doctrine, not a blanket permission slip."

Friday, May 30, 2025

It’s too expensive to fight every AI copyright battle, Getty CEO says; Ars Technica, May 28, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; It’s too expensive to fight every AI copyright battle, Getty CEO says


[Kip Currier: As of May 2025, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) data values Getty Images at nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars.

So it's noteworthy and should give individual creators pause that even a company of that size is publicly acknowledging the financial realities of copyright litigation against AI tech companies like Stability AI.

Even if the courts should determine that AI tech companies can prevail on fair use grounds against copyright infringement claims, isn't there something fundamentally unfair and unethical about AI tech oligarchs being able to devour and digest everyone else's copyrighted works, and then alchemize that improperly-taken aggregation of creativity into new IP works that they can monetize, with no recompense given to the original creators?

Just because someone can do something, doesn't mean they should be able to do it.

AI tech company leaders like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg et al would never stand for similar uses of their works without permission or compensation. 

Neither should creators. Quid pulchrum est (What's fair is fair).

If the courts do side with AI tech companies, new federal legislation may need to be enacted to provide protections for content creators from the AI tech companies that want and need their content to power up novel iterations of their AI tools via ever-increasing amounts of training data. 

In the current Congress, that's not likely to happen. But it may be possible after 2026 or 2028. If enough content creators make their voices heard through their grassroots advocacy and votes at the ballot box.]


[Excerpt]

"On Bluesky, a trial lawyer, Max Kennerly, effectively satirized Clegg and the whole AI industry by writing, "Our product creates such little value that it is simply not viable in the marketplace, not even as a niche product. Therefore, we must be allowed to unilaterally extract value from the work of others and convert that value into our profits."

Thursday, May 29, 2025

The Copyright Office’s Report on AI Training Material and Fair Use: Will It Stymie the U.S. AI Industry?; The Federalist Society, May 29, 2025

John Blanton Farmer  , The Federalist Society ; The Copyright Office’s Report on AI Training Material and Fair Use: Will It Stymie the U.S. AI Industry?

"Will the Trump Administration Withdraw the Report?

The Trump Administration might withdraw this report.

The Trump Administration is friendlier to the U.S. AI industry than the Biden Administration was. Shortly after taking office, it rescinded a Biden Administration executive order on the development and use of AI, which was restrictive and burdensome.

The day before the report was released, the Trump Administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the USCO. The day after the report was issued, it fired the head of the USCO. The administration didn’t comment on whether these firings were related to the report.

The USCO may have rushed out the report to prevent the Trump Administration from meddling with it. The version released was labeled a “pre-publication version.” It’s unusual to release a non-final version.

This report is not the law. Courts will decide this fair use issue. They’ll certainly consider this report, but they aren’t bound to follow it."

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Author sides with students in revolt over book passage used in AP exam; The Washington Post, May 24, 2025

, The Washington Post; Author sides with students in revolt over book passage used in AP exam

"Serpell, herself a longtime critic of standardized tests, said the College Board, the billion-dollar standardized-testing juggernaut that administers them, did not ask permission to use her work and distorted her writing.

“Stranger Faces,” a collection of essays on the pleasure people take in unusual faces in works of art, was geared toward professional scholars, not high school readers, Serpell said, and she insists that the complexity of her writing can only be understood in fuller context. The exam excerpt, she said, omitted critical writing that would have made her arguments and rhetorical effects clearer.

As Serpell deals with the fallout — which, in some cases, she said, included death threats — she is siding with the students, taking up their arguments with the College Board and touching off a heated online debate over academic ethics."

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Judge Hints Anthropic’s AI Training on Books Is Fair Use; Bloomberg Law, May 22, 2025

, Bloomberg Law; Judge Hints Anthropic’s AI Training on Books Is Fair Use

"A California federal judge is leaning toward finding Anthropic PBC violated copyright law when it made initial copies of pirated books, but that its subsequent uses to train their generative AI models qualify as fair use.

“I’m inclined to say they did violate the Copyright Act but the subsequent uses were fair use,” Judge William Alsup said Thursday during a hearing in San Francisco. “That’s kind of the way I’m leaning right now,” he said, but concluded the 90-minute hearing by clarifying that his decision isn’t final. “Sometimes I say that and change my mind."...

The first judge to rule will provide a window into how federal courts interpret the fair use argument for training generative artificial intelligence models with copyrighted materials. A decision against Anthropic could disrupt the billion-dollar business model behind many AI companies, which rely on the belief that training with unlicensed copyrighted content doesn’t violate the law."

The Library of Congress Shake-Up Endangers Copyrights; Bloomberg, May 24, 2025

 Stephen Mihm, Bloomberg; The Library of Congress Shake-Up Endangers Copyrights

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Copyright Alliance CEO and Others Resign from ALI’s Copyright Restatement Project; Copyright Alliance, May 16, 2025

Copyright Alliance; Copyright Alliance CEO and Others Resign from ALI’s Copyright Restatement Project

"In a statement issued today, Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid announced that he, along with numerous other advisers and liaisons, have resigned from the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement of Copyright Law (Restatement) project, effective immediately. The resignations follow those of four prominent law professors earlier this week. 

According to Kupferschmid, “I am officially announcing my departure from the ALI’s Copyright Restatement project for a number of critical reasons, including the fact that throughout the initiative, ALI Copyright Restatement Reporters routinely disregarded concerns and comments shared by the U.S. Copyright Office, judges, and numerous other expert participants. This input was not considered because it differed from the ALI Reporters’ views and biases regarding copyright law. 

“Before the start of this project, we and many others warned that the Copyright Restatement effort was likely to look much more like a restatement of the Reporters’ views rather than actual copyright law. Unfortunately, these predictions came true, resulting in the final version of the Copyright Restatement presenting a restrictive and warped view of copyright—one that is inconsistent with the statute and case law and reflects the Reporters’ aspirations to change the copyright law.

“There is a general undercurrent of anti-copyright sentiment that runs through the entire Copyright Restatement that manifests itself through a disproportionate focus on atypical court decisions that limit the scope of copyright protection. Not only does the ALI Restatement emphasize minority and outlier decisions and focuses on the exceptions rather than the rules, but at times during the project, the Reporters also drew conclusions that the current law simply does not support. 

“It is for these reasons that I have signed onto a letter to the ALI voicing my concerns and stepping down from my role as liaison. I am not alone in this belief, as evidenced by the fact that approximately half of the advisers and liaisons have, or are in the process of, resigning from this project, one that that falls far short of the ALI’s otherwise high standards and stellar reputation.”

###

ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE

The Copyright Alliance is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest and educational organization representing the copyright interests of over two million individual creators and over 15,000 organizations in the United States, across the spectrum of copyright disciplines. The Copyright Alliance is dedicated to advocating policies that promote and preserve the value of copyright, and to protecting the rights of creators and innovators. The Copyright Alliance is the unified voice of the copyright community, and the views espoused may not reflect the specific views of any individual or organization. For more information, please visit our website."

Restatement of the Law, Copyright Is Approved; The American Law Institute, May 20, 2025

Press Release, The American Law Institute ; Restatement of the Law, Copyright Is Approved

"The American Law Institute’s membership voted today to approve Restatement of the Law, Copyright. This is the first Restatement devoted to copyright law and provides guidance to courts in areas in which the governing statute leaves significant scope for discretion in this complex field. Restatements are primarily addressed to courts. They aim at clear formulations of the law and reflect the law as it presently stands or might appropriately be stated by a court. Launched in 2014, the project has been presented in stages at ALI’s Annual Meetings over the past five years.

The Reporter for the project is Christopher Jon Sprigman of New York University School of Law. Associate Reporters are Daniel J. Gervais of Vanderbilt University Law School; Lydia Pallas Loren of Lewis & Clark Law School; R. Anthony Reese of University of California, Irvine School of Law; and Molly S. Van Houweling of University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

“The Copyright Restatement represents a major milestone in ALI’s ongoing work to clarify areas the law,” said ALI Director Diane P. Wood. “Copyright law is rooted in a detailed federal statute, yet the courts continue to play a critical role in interpreting key concepts and applying them in new technological and creative contexts. This Restatement brings coherence and analytical rigor to these interpretive challenges. It provides courts and practitioners with a principled guide to the areas in which judges have been asked to exercise their discretion. Like ALI’s recent Restatement work on U.S. Foreign Relations Law and The Law of American Indians, the Copyright project reflects our commitment to supporting the sound development of the law.”

“The Copyright Act, while comprehensive in some areas, leaves many important questions to be worked out in the courts,” added Reporter Sprigman. “This Restatement distills and organizes how courts have addressed these open questions and offers clear guidance. Copyright law has never stood still—it evolves with the ways we create, share, and build upon culture, knowledge, and information. The Copyright Act provides the scaffolding, but the courts play a central role on many of the most consequential questions in copyright law. What this Restatement does is gather, organize, and clarify the case law that fills in those statutory gaps. We aimed to reflect how judges have actually decided these issues and to present the guidance in a way that is accessible, coherent, and faithful to doctrine. It has been a privilege to work with such a deeply knowledgeable team of Associate Reporters, Advisers, Liaisons, and ALI members, and I believe the final product will serve as an essential secondary source for years to come.”

This Restatement offers guidance to courts in areas of copyright law including the boundary between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable ideas and facts; the scope of exclusive rights; ownership and transfer rules; infringement standards; defenses like fair use and first sale; and available remedies.

The publication is organized into eleven chapters:

  1. Subject Matter and Standards
  2. Scope of Protection
  3. Initial Ownership, Transfers, Voluntary Licenses, and Termination of Grants
  4. Copyright Formalities
  5. Duration of Copyright
  6. Copyright Rights and Limitations
  7. Copyright Infringement
  8. Secondary Liability
  9. Remedies for Copyright Infringement
  10. Copyright-Protection-and-Management Systems
  11. Procedural Issues and Relationship to Other Bodies of Law

ALI Reporters, under the oversight of the Director, will now prepare the Institute’s official text for publication. At this stage, Reporters may update citations, make editorial revisions, and incorporate any final changes approved during the Annual Meeting. Until the official Volume is published, the approved Tentative Drafts represent the official position of The American Law Institute and may be cited as such.

* * *

About The American Law Institute
The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law. The ALI drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that are influential in the courts and legislatures, as well as in legal scholarship and education. By participating in the Institute’s work, its distinguished members have the opportunity to influence the development of the law in both existing and emerging areas, to work with other eminent lawyers, judges, and academics, to support the rule of law and the legal system, and to contribute to the public good."

Fannin County school play canceled over copyright violation, principal says; WSBTV.com, May 20, 2025

 WSBTV.com News Staff , WSBTV.com; Fannin County school play canceled over copyright violation, principal says

"While the changes themselves were not detailed, and Channel 2 Action News has reached out for more information, school officials said the copyright violation from their license of the play made their decision for them.

“Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher,” school officials said. “The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.”

The school also confirmed in their statement that the script is taught in English classes at the institution, though it is not a required text."

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

We're All Copyright Owners. Why You Need to Care About AI and Copyright; CNET, May 19, 2025

 Katelyn Chedraoui , CNET; We're All Copyright Owners. Why You Need to Care About AI and Copyright

"Most of us don't think about copyright very often in our daily lives. But in the age of generative AI, it has quickly become one of the most important issues in the development and outputs of chatbots and image and video generators. It's something that affects all of us because we're all copyright owners and authors...

What does all of this mean for the future?

Copyright owners are in a bit of a holding pattern for now. But beyond the legal and ethical implications, copyright in the age of AI raises important questions about the value of creative work, the cost of innovation and the ways in which we need or ought to have government intervention and protections. 

There are two distinct ways to view the US's intellectual property laws, Mammen said. The first is that these laws were enacted to encourage and reward human flourishing. The other is more economically focused; the things that we're creating have value, and we want our economy to be able to recognize that value accordingly."

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

The AI and Copyright Issues Dividing Trump’s Court; Jacobin, May 19, 2025

DAVID MOSCROP , Jacobin; The AI and Copyright Issues Dividing Trump’s Court

"As many have pointed out, the copyright-AI battle is not only a central struggle within the Trump administration; it is also a broader conflict over who controls intellectual property and to what end. For decades, corporations have abused copyright to unreasonably extend coverage periods and impoverish the public domain. Their goal: maximizing both control over IP and profits. But AI firms aren’t interested in reforming that system. They’re not looking to open access or enrich the commons — they just want training data. And in fighting for it, they may end up reshaping copyright law in ways that outlast this administration.

As Nguyen notes, after the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, was turfed by DOGE-aligned officials, Trump antitrust adviser Mike Davis posted to Truth Social: “Now tech bros are going to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits. . . . This is 100 percent unacceptable.” Trump reposted it. That’s the shape of the struggle: MAGA populists, who see their own content as sacred property, are up against a tech elite that views all content as extractable fuel."

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Intellectual property is our bedrock; Daily Journal, May 17, 2025

 Phil Kerpen, Daily Journal; Intellectual property is our bedrock

"Elon Musk is probably the second-most powerful man in the world these days, so when he responded to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s “delete all IP law” post with “I agree,” we need to take this radical proposal seriously.

Musk and Dorsey want their AI bots to remix all the world’s content without having to worry about who owns it, but it’s important that we slow down and start from first principles, or we risk undermining one of the foundations of our Constitution and economic system.

The moral case for IP was already powerfully articulated prior to American independence by John Locke. In his 1694 memorandum opposing the renewal of the Licensing Act, Locke wrote: “Books seem to me to be the most proper thing for a man to have a property in of any thing that is the product of his mind,” which is no doubt equally true of more modern creative works. Unlike physical property, which is a mixture of an individual’s work effort and the pre-existing natural world, creative works are the pure creation of the human mind. How could they not then properly be owned by their authors?

The Constitution cements this truth. Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This clause isn’t incidental; it’s a deliberate choice to recognize inventors and authors properly have a property right in their creations and is the only right expressly protected in the base text of the Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added...

Deleting all IP law is like banning free speech to stop misinformation — it might narrowly accomplish its goal, but only by destroying what we ought to be protecting."