Copyright law is AI's 2024 battlefield; Axios, January 2, 2023

 Megan Morrone , Axios; Copyright law is AI's 2024 battlefield

"Looming fights over copyright in AI are likely to set the new technology's course in 2024 faster than legislation or regulation.

Driving the news: The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on December 27, claiming their AI systems' "widescale copying" constitutes copyright infringement.

The big picture: After a year of lawsuits from creators protecting their works from getting gobbled up and repackaged by generative AI tools, the new year could see significant rulings that alter the progress of AI innovation. 

Why it matters: The copyright decisions coming down the pike — over both the use of copyrighted material in the development of AI systems and also the status of works that are created by or with the help of AI — are crucial to the technology's future and could determine winners and losers in the market."

‘Please regulate AI:' Artists push for U.S. copyright reforms but tech industry says not so fast; AP, November 18, 2023

 MATT O’BRIEN, AP; ‘Please regulate AI:' Artists push for U.S. copyright reforms but tech industry says not so fast

"Most tech companies cite as precedent Google’s success in beating back legal challenges to its online book library. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 let stand lower court rulings that rejected authors’ claim that Google’s digitizing of millions of books and showing snippets of them to the public amounted to copyright infringement.

But that’s a flawed comparison, argued former law professor and bestselling romance author Heidi Bond, who writes under the pen name Courtney Milan. Bond said she agrees that “fair use encompasses the right to learn from books,” but Google Books obtained legitimate copies held by libraries and institutions, whereas many AI developers are scraping works of writing through “outright piracy.”

Perlmutter said this is what the Copyright Office is trying to help sort out.

“Certainly this differs in some respects from the Google situation,” Perlmutter said. “Whether it differs enough to rule out the fair use defense is the question in hand.”"

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."

WTF is GDPR?; TechCrunch, January 20, 2018

Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch; WTF is GDPR?

"The EC’s theory is that consumer trust is essential to fostering growth in the digital economy. And it thinks trust can be won by giving users of digital services more information and greater control over how their data is used. Which is — frankly speaking — a pretty refreshing idea when you consider the clandestine data brokering that pervades the tech industry. Mass surveillance isn’t just something governments do.

The General Data Protection Regulation (aka GDPR) was agreed after more than three years of negotiations between the EU’s various institutions.

It’s set to apply across the 28-Member State bloc as of May 25, 2018. That means EU countries are busy transposing it into national law via their own legislative updates (such as the UK’s new Data Protection Bill — yes, despite the fact the country is currently in the process of (br)exiting the EU, the government has nonetheless committed to implementing the regulation because it needs to keep EU-UK data flowing freely in the post-brexit future. Which gives an early indication of the pulling power of GDPR.

Meanwhile businesses operating in the EU are being bombarded with ads from a freshly energized cottage industry of ‘privacy consultants’ offering to help them get ready for the new regs — in exchange for a service fee. It’s definitely a good time to be a law firm specializing in data protection."

Lee staying on as patent chief under Trump administration; Politico, 1/19/17

Ashley Gold, Nancy Scola, Li Zhou, Tony Romm, Politico; 

Lee staying on as patent chief under Trump administration

"President-elect Donald Trump has decided to keep former Google executive Michelle Lee on as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, who informed tech industry organizations gathered in Washington Thursday for a breakfast event...

Lee, who served a dozen years as patent counsel at Google, has been seen in her years in office as walking a careful line between the two patent camps — choosing to focus less on policy than on process upgrades aimed at improving the quality of patents issued by the office.

"I hope that Director Lee expands her focus from just patent quality and lends her expertise and authority to help fix the very real problem that the U.S. has lost its "gold standard" patent system — it no longer promises stable, effective property rights to innovators," said Adam Mosoff, a law professor and co-founder of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason University."

Who Will Head the Patent and Trademark Office Under Trump?; Inside Counsel, 12/15/16

Scott Graham, Inside Counsel; Who Will Head the Patent and Trademark Office Under Trump? :

"Michelle Lee’s tenure as undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property is scheduled to conclude in January. While it’s not out of the question that she could continue in the role under Trump, observers see it as unlikely because of her past association with the Silicon Valley technology community and Google Inc., where she was head of patents and patent strategy before joining the PTO. Trump has a chilly relationship with tech and—while he said little about patent policy during the campaign—he is expected to favor a candidate who supports stronger patent rights...

Harter has speculated that Vice President-elect Mike Pence could hold some sway on IP policy. As a congressman Pence was skeptical of patent reform measures, though he voted for the America Invents Act. Pence also figures to be fluent with the IP issues of pharmaceutical companies given Eli Lilly & Co.’s presence in Indianapolis."

Google and Oracle's $9.3 Billion Fair Use Fight Starts Today, Here's a Guide; Fortune, 5/9/16

Jeff John Roberts, Fortune; Google and Oracle's $9.3 Billion Fair Use Fight Starts Today, Here's a Guide:

"Why are Google and Oracle in court?

The case is about intellectual property. It began six years ago when Oracle sued Google for using APIs tied to Java (more on this below) without permission. Google won at an initial trial in 2012 when a jury found the company didn’t infringe Oracle’s patents, and a judge concluded the APIs didn’t qualify for copyright protection.

But in a ruling that shocked the tech community, an appeals court found in 2014 that Oracle’s APIs were indeed covered by copyright. The ruling also kicked the case back to the lower court to determine whether Google’s use of the APIs counted as a “fair use.” Now, at this second trial, a jury will look at the fair use question."