Copyright Office: Sorry, but you probably can’t protect your AI-generated art; Fast Company, June 30, 2023

JESUS DIAZ, Fast Company; Copyright Office: Sorry, but you probably can’t protect your AI-generated art

"Well, there’s nothing to see here, folks. You don’t need any of the generative AI tools in our weekly roundup because they will produce stuff you don’t really own. At least that’s what the United States Copyright Office (USCO) says. The federal agency doubled down on its AI doctrine during a recent webinar, labeling anything produced by AI as “unclaimable material.”

In other words, anything that comes out of an AI program can’t be protected under copyright law and will not be accepted even if it’s included in a work created by a human. So those extra trees and mountains you added to your landscape photo with Photoshop Firefly beta? They are not yours, sorry.”

Robert Kasunic of the USCO says, “The Office will refuse to register works entirely generated by AI. Human authorship is a precondition to copyrightability.” But it’s more complicated than that. As Petapixel reports, USCO will register your images if they are modified with AI, but you will have to declare which parts are made using AI, making them “unclaimable, essentially discounting them” from the copyright protection. Kasunic went on to say that USCO believes that using any AI to generate content is akin to giving instructions to a commissioned artist.

How will USCO enforce this policy in a world where generative AI work is practically undetectable? It’s a question that only has one obvious answer: LOL."

Copyright Office identifies visual arts copyright problems, solutions; Lexology, January 24, 2019

Thompson Coburn LLP - Mark Sableman, Lexology; Copyright Office identifies visual arts copyright problems, solutions

 

"Our forms are antiquated and difficult to use. Our definition of “publication” is important but hard to understand and apply. Our process for enforcing rights is tedious, costly, and time consuming.

 

Those are key takeaways from a report by the Copyright Office to Congress about visual works copyrights. And that’s not all of the bad news. In addition to deficiencies in its own processes, the Copyright Office reported the hardly surprising conclusion that people on the Internet often misuse copyrighted works and mislead users about copyright...

 

The report, titled “Copyright and Visual Works: The Legal Landscape of Opportunities and Challenges,” concerns a recent “holistic analysis of the copyright landscape in which visual artists must work.” Based on comments from industry and the public, the Copyright Office identified three major challenges for visual artist copyrights: the registration process, licensing, and enforcement."

Responsible Enforcement: How To Handle Copyright Disputes; Forbes, January 31, 2018

Art Neill, Forbes; Responsible Enforcement: How To Handle Copyright Disputes

"Co-author Teri Karobonik contributed to this post*

You’ve started your business and covered all your bases. You’ve got contracts in place and you registered your copyrights and trademarks. But then it happens: you see your copyright or trademark reused without your permission. Or maybe, despite your carefully crafted contract, the videographer your hired to create a promo video won’t give you the video that you paid for. Or perhaps someone just said something really mean about you on the internet. What do you do?

There are many types of legal disputes that you might encounter when you own intellectual property. While we can’t tell you what to do in every situation, let’s break down many of the types of disputes you may encounter and provide some basic suggestions for responding to those disputes.

This is part of 1 of 3 about responsible enforcement in copyright disputes. The next two articles will be about trademark and defamation disputes."

Why The US Can't Afford To Fall Behind In Intellectual Property Enforcement; Forbes, April 17, 2017

Mark Elliot, Forbes; 

Why The US Can't Afford To Fall Behind In Intellectual Property Enforcement

"It’s not hard to see that the U.S. has more skin in the game when it comes to intellectual property. But that is why it might come as a surprise to some that America no longer leads the world when it comes to IP enforcement: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 2017 International IP Index shows that the U.S. now ranks fifth, behind the U.K., Sweden, France and Germany. Given the high stakes, this is certainly not a new normal we should embrace.

So, how did we get here? The Chamber’s Index identified as a key weakness our: “inconsistent enforcement against counterfeit and pirated goods.”"

China’s theft of U.S. trade secrets under scrutiny; Science, February 28, 2017

Mara Hvistendahl, Science; 

China’s theft of U.S. trade secrets under scrutiny

"When it comes to intellectual property (IP) theft, there’s the rest of the world, and then there’s China, a new report says. In 2015, mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for 87% of counterfeit goods seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. China’s share of trade secrets theft, though harder to track, is not far behind, claims the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property in Washington, D.C., a bipartisan nongovernmental group co-chaired by former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011.

Stolen trade secrets, pirated software, and counterfeiting cost the United States between $225 billion and $600 billion per year, the commission estimates...

Scholars often take issue with efforts to put a price tag on IP theft... 

Also up for debate is how best to address IP theft. The Obama administration pursued a strategy heavy on prosecutions of Chinese-born U.S. scientists (see here, here, and here), along with symbolic moves against overseas offenders, such as the 2014 indictment of five members of a People’s Liberation Army hacking unit. Policy tools improved under Obama went “largely unused,” the report said. For instance, a 2015 law enabling the president to sanction foreign countries, companies, and individuals for IP theft has not yet been invoked."

Copy This: Vatican Stakes Out Rights to Pope Francis' Image; Associated Press via New York Times, February 26, 2017

Associated Press via New York Times; 

Copy This: Vatican Stakes Out Rights to Pope Francis' Image

""The pope's image rights are no different from those of any other famous celebrity and so it's not surprising that the Vatican is giving notice that it will protect its (intellectual property) rights as necessary," said Nick Kounoupias, the founder of an intellectual property consultancy in London. "What will be interesting to see, however, is how vigorously these rights are pursued, given who the IP owner is.""

What the NHL’s trademark fiasco can teach you about brand preparedness; Financial Post, 1/12/17

Chad Finkelstein, Financial Post; What the NHL’s trademark fiasco can teach you about brand preparedness:

"Whether the USPTO’s position will hold up in the United States (and what the fate of the Canadian trademarks applications are) remains to be seen, but the situation should be viewed by trademark owners and prospective trademark owners as a warning about not taking proactive steps to get trademarks registered. The longer an unregistered trademark is in use, the more it will cost to go through a rebranding."

Top IP-Watch Stories Of 2010: Copyright Fights, ACTA, Medicines Access; Intellectual Property Watch, 12/30/10

William New and Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; Top IP-Watch Stories Of 2010: Copyright Fights, ACTA, Medicines Access:

"At Intellectual Property Watch, a list of the top 25 posts of 2010 reveals your – our readers’ – top interests of the past year.

The clear winner in terms of frequency on the list was the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), as about a third of the top stories dealt with that treaty in the headline and several more indirectly. But the top two on the list were articles about the ongoing struggle to balance the push by copyright holders for greater protection in the digital environment with the push to ensure that knowledge may be accessed by the maximum number of people. Given that stories about enforcement far outnumber stories about new ideas to spread open access or to generate revenue, one might conclude that enforcement may be the core business model for many."

The Future of Copyright - Cato Institute, 6/9/08

The Future of Copyright:
"Unauthorized sharing of files will prevail in darknets, online and offline. On the other hand, certain non-digital activities, like book publishing, continue to work relatively well under the terms of classical copyright law designed for printing presses. Still other fields, like software and music, are characterized by complex competition among different models, where some make money on selling copyable units, while others profit by delivering uncopyable services. A qualified guess is that we will have to live in this landscape of gray zones for quite a while, for good and bad."
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/06/09/rasmus-fleischer/the-future-of-copyright/