Intellectual property (IP) rights and IP-related rights, such as trade secrets and regulatory exclusivities, play a crucial role in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. However, possible interactions may be anticipated when comparing the legal relationships formed by these rights with those established by human rights. This study synthesises 53 laws and treaties illustrating the IP landscape for AI in health systems across Europe and examines their intersections with health-focused human rights. Our analysis reveals that a great variety of datasets, software, hardware, output, AI model architecture, data bases, and graphical user interfaces can be subject to IP protection. Although codified limitations and exceptions on IP and IP-related rights exist, interpretation of their conditions and scope permits for diverse interpretations and is left to the discretion of courts. Comparing these rights to health-focused human rights highlights tensions between promoting innovation and ensuring accessibility, quality, and equity in health systems, as well as between human rights ideals and the protection of European digital sovereignty. As these rights often pursue conflicting objectives and may involve trade-offs, future research should explore new ways to reconcile these objectives and foster solidarity in sharing the risks and benefits among stakeholders."
Friday, November 28, 2025
Artificial intelligence, intellectual property, and human rights: mapping the legal landscape in European health systems; npj Health Systems, November 25, 2025
Copyright Piracy at the Supreme Court In Cox v. Sony: is an internet provider liable for digital thieves?; The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2025
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Supreme Court Defers Ruling on Trump’s Effort to Oust Copyright Official; The New York Times, November 26, 2025
Ann E. Marimow, The New York Times ; Supreme Court Defers Ruling on Trump’s Effort to Oust Copyright Official
"The Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred a decision about whether President Trump could remove the government’s top copyright official until after the justices resolved a pair of related cases testing the president’s power to fire independent regulators.
The court’s order is a placeholder and means that Shira Perlmutter, the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, can remain in her role as an adviser to Congress at least until January. The order represents a rare departure from recent cases in which the conservative majority has allowed Mr. Trump to immediately remove agency leaders while litigation over their status continues in the lower courts.
The justices said they were putting off a decision in Ms. Perlmutter’s case until after the court heard arguments in December and January in cases testing the president’s authority to fire other government officials, despite laws generally prohibiting their dismissals that were meant to protect them from political interference."
Prosecutor Used Flawed A.I. to Keep a Man in Jail, His Lawyers Say; The New York Times, November 25, 2025
Shaila Dewan, The New York Times ; Prosecutor Used Flawed A.I. to Keep a Man in Jail, His Lawyers Say
"On Friday, the lawyers were joined by a group of 22 legal and technology scholars who warned that the unchecked use of A.I. could lead to wrongful convictions. The group, which filed its own brief with the state Supreme Court, included Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, which has helped to exonerate more than 250 people; Chesa Boudin, a former district attorney of San Francisco; and Katherine Judson, executive director of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, a nonprofit that seeks to improve the reliability of criminal prosecutions.
The problem of A.I.-generated errors in legal papers has burgeoned along with the popular use of tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, which can perform a wide range of tasks, including writing emails, term papers and legal briefs. Lawyers and even judges have been caught filing court papers that were rife with fake legal references and faulty arguments, leading to embarrassment and sometimes hefty fines.
The Kjoller case, though, is one of the first in which prosecutors, whose words carry great sway with judges and juries, have been accused of using A.I. without proper safeguards...
Lawyers are not prohibited from using A.I., but they are required to ensure that their briefs, however they are written, are accurate and faithful to the law. Today’s artificial intelligence tools are known to sometimes “hallucinate,” or make things up, especially when asked complex legal questions...
Westlaw executives said that their A.I. tool does not write legal briefs, because they believe A.I. is not yet capable of the complex reasoning needed to do so...
Damien Charlotin, a senior researcher at HEC Paris, maintains a database that includes more than 590 cases from around the world in which courts and tribunals have detected hallucinated content. More than half involved people who represented themselves in court. Two-thirds of the cases were in United States courts. Only one, an Israeli case, involved A.I. use by a prosecutor."
Estate of Johnny Cash suing Coca-Cola for using tribute act in advert; The Guardian, November 27, 2025
Laura Snapes, The Guardian; Estate of Johnny Cash suing Coca-Cola for using tribute act in advert
"The estate of Johnny Cash is suing Coca-Cola for illegally hiring a tribute act to impersonate the late US country singer in an advertisement that plays between college football games.
The case has been filed under the Elvis Act of Tennessee, made effective last year, which protects a person’s voice from exploitation without consent. The estate said that while it has previously licensed Cash’s songs, Coca-Cola did not approach them for permission in this instance."
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
What Is Agentic A.I., and Would You Trust It to Book a Flight?; The New York Times, November 25, 2025
Gabe Castro-Root, The New York Times ; What Is Agentic A.I., and Would You Trust It to Book a Flight?
"A bot may soon be booking your vacation.
Millions of travelers already use artificial intelligence to compare options for flights, hotels, rental cars and more. About 30 percent of U.S. travelers say they’re comfortable using A.I. to plan a trip. But these tools are about to take a big step.
Agentic A.I., a rapidly emerging type of artificial intelligence, will be able to find and pay for reservations with limited human involvement, developers say. Companies like Expedia, Google, Kayak and Priceline are experimenting with or rolling out agentic A.I. tools.
Travelers using agentic A.I. would set parameters like dates and a price range for their travel plans, then hand over their credit card information to the bot, which would monitor prices and book on their behalf...
Think of agentic A.I. as a personal assistant, said Shilpa Ranganathan, the chief product officer at Expedia Group, which is developing both generative and agentic A.I. trip-planning tools.
While the more familiar generative A.I. can summarize information and answer questions, agentic tools can carry out tasks. Travelers benefit by deputizing these tools to perform time-consuming chores like tracking flight prices."
AI, ethics, and the lawyer's duty after Noland v. Land of the Free; Daily Journal, November 24, 2025
Reza Torkzadeh, Daily Journal; AI, ethics, and the lawyer's duty after Noland v. Land of the Free
"Noland establishes a bright line for California lawyers. AI may assist with drafting or research, but it does not replace judgment, verification or ethical responsibility. Technology may change how legal work is produced -- it does not change who is accountable for it."
Freedom To Read; Mt. Lebanon Magazine, November 24, 2025
Merle Jantz, Freedom To Read; Freedom To Read
"Patrons will tell you: There’s a lot to love about Mt. Lebanon Public Library. Award-winning programs for all ages, knowledgeable and committed staff members, a wide and lovingly curated collection of items from multiple media and plans for a building renovation. Enough good stuff to make it a thriving community hub. But one thing stood out above all the rest, and caught the eye of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s Library of the Year selection board, which chose Mt. Lebanon from among 630 public libraries, marking the first time any Allegheny County library has received the award. The library is the commonwealth’s first (and at press time only) book sanctuary.
The Chicago Public Library and the City of Chicago launched the first book sanctuary in 2022, declaring themselves a space for endangered stories and calling for others to join the movement. Currently, there are 5,361 book sanctuaries across the country.
What’s a book sanctuary?
It’s a space where access to books and the right to read them are protected. A book sanctuary is committed to doing at least one of the following:
- Collecting and protecting endangered books
- Making those books broadly accessible
- Hosting book talks and events on banned books featuring diverse voices
- Educating others on the history of book bans and burning
- Upholding the First Amendment rights of all citizens
This means the library will not remove or relocate any materials from the library’s collection, as long as those materials meet the standards of the approved policy."
‘The Library of Congress’ Review: Corridors of Knowledge; The Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2025
Michael Auslin , The Wall Street Journal; ‘The Library of Congress’ Review: Corridors of Knowledge
"When the president unexpectedly fired the librarian of Congress, a prominent legislator denounced the “open despotism which now rules at Washington.” The year was 1829, and as Andrew Jackson installed a political ally as librarian, it was Henry Clay who accused the president of being a threat to democracy.
This is but one vignette from Jane Aikin’s comprehensive history “The Library of Congress” (Georgetown, 356 pages, $32.95), which shows how bare-knuckled domestic politics have often shadowed the crown jewel of America’s intellectual institutions. In April, the library turned 225 years old, secure in its position as one of the world’s largest libraries. It now houses approximately 178 million items, from ancient clay tablets to Stradivarius violins, from the Gutenberg Bible to ever-expanding digital records."
Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement; SCOTUSblog, November 25, 2025
Ronald Mann , SCOTUSblog; Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement
"The court will hear its big copyright case for the year during the first week of the December session, when on Monday, Dec. 1, it reviews a billion-dollar ruling against Cox Communications based on its failure to eradicate copyright infringement by its customers."
Is unauthorized artificial intelligence use in law school an honor code violation?; ABA Journal, November 4, 2025
JULIANNE HILL, ABA Journal; Is unauthorized artificial intelligence use in law school an honor code violation?
"With generative artificial intelligence’s growing availability and acceptance into students’ workflow, some law schools are wondering whether unauthorized AI use should be an honor code violation—something that could potentially trip up aspiring lawyers in the character and fitness portion of the bar licensure process...
Lack of clarity
The problem stems from unclear AI policies within law schools and universities, says Daniel W. Linna Jr., a senior lecturer and the director of law and technology initiatives at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Illinois.
These cases “illustrate why these policies are problematic,” says Linna, a 2018 Journal Legal Rebel.
The vast majority of policies that Linna has seen at law schools don’t draw firm lines between what is and what isn’t acceptable...
“We don’t have a good means of policing this,” Linna says. “What if someone is wrongly accused and or maybe even makes innocent mistakes? This should really force law schools to reconsider what we’re trying to accomplish with these policies and whether we’re doing more harm than good.”...
Along with clear AI policies, says Kellye Testy, the executive director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools, the solution includes solid ethical training for law students to use AI before entering the workplace, where comfort with the tool will be expected."
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
A Victory for IMLS as Court Blocks Trump’s Attempt to Dismantle Agency; Library Journal, November 21, 2025
Lisa Peet, Library Journal ; A Victory for IMLS as Court Blocks Trump’s Attempt to Dismantle Agency
"In a summary judgment on November 21 in Rhode Island v. Trump, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), along with other federal agencies, was illegal and unconstitutional.
McConnell’s ruling permanently enjoins the administration “from taking any future actions to implement, give effect to, comply with, or carry out the directives contained in the Reduction EO with respect to IMLS,” as well as the Minority Business Development Agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Shortly after President Trump issued a March 14 executive order that called for the elimination of IMLS and six other government agencies, two separate lawsuits were filed: American Library Association v. Sonderling by the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and Rhode Island v. Trump by a coalition of 21 state attorneys general."
Huckabee’s Copyright Claim Over AI Advances Against Bloomberg; Bloomberg Law, November 25, 2025
"A federal judge declined to dismiss a copyright-infringement claim in a proposed class action led by Mike Huckabee, accusing Bloomberg LP of using a pirated dataset to train its AI model.
Judge Margaret M. Garnett said she couldn’t evaluate Bloomberg’s defense that its use of authors’ books to train BloombergGPT was fair use under US copyright law without a factual record, denying its motion to dismiss in a Monday opinion filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York."
White Bird Clinic sues Willamette Valley Crisis Care over misuse of trade secrets, copyright infringement; Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), November 24, 2025
Nathan Wilk , Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB); White Bird Clinic sues Willamette Valley Crisis Care over misuse of trade secrets, copyright infringement
"Eugene’s White Bird Clinic is suing a rival nonprofit, Willamette Valley Crisis Care, over copyright infringement and the stealing of trade secrets.
WVCC was founded after White Bird shuttered CAHOOTS services in Eugene in April. The new nonprofit hopes to launch a similar mobile crisis intervention program and has multiple former CAHOOTS staff members on board.
White Bird is now alleging that minutes before WVCC co-founder Alese “Dandy” Colehour sent a resignation letter to White Bird earlier this month, they downloaded confidential client information, training manuals and other materials to give to the newer non-profit.
White Bird is also accusing the WVCC of infringing on its CAHOOTS trademark through advertising materials and other public outreach efforts, and of passing off White Bird’s services as its own."
Monday, November 24, 2025
Minister indicates sympathy for artists in debate over AI and copyright; The Guardian, November 23, 2025
Robert Booth, The Guardian; Minister indicates sympathy for artists in debate over AI and copyright
"The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has indicated she is sympathetic to artists’ demands not to have their copyrighted works scraped by AI companies without payment and said she wanted to “reset” the debate.
In remarks that suggest a change in approach from her predecessor, Peter Kyle, who had hoped to require artists to actively opt out of having their work ingested by generative AI systems, she said “people rightly want to get paid for the work that they do” and “we have to find a way that both sectors can grow and thrive in future”.
The government has been consulting on a new intellectual property framework for AI which, in the case of the most common large language models (LLMs), requires vast amounts of training data to work effectively.
The issue has sparked impassioned protests from some of Britain’s most famous artists. This month Paul McCartney released a silent two-minute 45 second track of an empty studio on an album protesting against copyright grabs by AI firms as part of a campaign also backed by Kate Bush, Sam Fender, the Pet Shop Boys and Hans Zimmer."
Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves; Missouri Independent, November 18, 2025
, Missouri Independent ; Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves
“This is a real victory for all library professionals who are trained to select age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate material for students in both public and private schools,” Gillian Wilcox, the ACLU of Missouri’s director of litigation, told The Independent. “It is a real insult to their training and professionalism for the government to think that it knows better what books belong in those schools, and it’s an insult to parents as well.”
The now-void law, passed by Missouri lawmakers in 2022, expanded the state’s regulations on pornography to create the offense of providing explicit sexual material to a student. It applied only to those “affiliated with a public or private elementary or secondary school in an official capacity.”
The law is part of a larger trend placing higher scrutiny on what books are offered by libraries and schools. In Missouri, efforts earlier this year to place new restrictions on digital libraries and expand the officials who could face prosecution were debated but did not pass."
Power of traditional knowledge in modern education; Navajo Times, October 30, 2025
Harold G. Begay , Navajo Times; Power of traditional knowledge in modern education
"Re-envisioning humanity’s relationship to nature, authentic Native knowledge, and advancing scientific frameworks is deserving of rediscovery and serious attention. Our systemic traditional knowledge has always been our guiding light, deeply embedded in our worldview, our interpretation of the natural world, and its profound link to contemporary science.
Our schoolchildren and students deserve challenging academics to acquire the tools critical to re-envision humanity’s relationship with nature and to rediscover the importance of our authentic heritage, Native knowledge. It is important to reconsider, invest in, and deepen our understanding of humanity’s connection to nature, our authentic Native knowledge, and the advancement of scientific frameworks. These areas are worthy of renewed educational discovery and meaningful exploration."
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Rock Hall ‘fair use’ ruling raises big questions for creators; Cleveland.com, November 21, 2025
Peter Chakerian, Cleveland.com; Rock Hall ‘fair use’ ruling raises big questions for creators
"Seeing things from both sides
“It can be a slippery-sloped and indeed it was a slippery slope,” said attorney Mark Avsec, partner and vice chair of the Intellectual Property Group of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.
Avsec was part of the funk-rock band Wild Cherry (“Play That Funky Music”) and was an original member of Donnie Iris & the Cruisers. The keyboardist-songwriter wrote or co-wrote all the latter band’s music, was its sole lyricist and produced all of its albums.
“[C]ases started evolving to where any derivative work based on a copyrighted work was almost by definition transformative and therefore a fair use,” he said.
“That can’t be right. A copyright owner’s ability to authorize or not authorize derivative works based on the copyrighted work is an important right under the Copyright Act.”
Avsec said that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the recent Warhol case reset things."
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Tech should help us be creative. AI rips our creativity away; The Guardian, November 21, 2025
Dave Schilling, The Guardian ; Tech should help us be creative. AI rips our creativity away
"Advocates for AI art always throw the word “democratization” around, claiming that these machine tools remove the barriers for entry to creativity. Those barriers were actually pretty valuable, because they prevented people from having to suffer through things that are objectively bad. But again, that’s the old way of thinking. The concept of “bad” or “good” hardly exists any more. In its place, we have a goopy stew of garbage with a few nuggets of actual sustenance periodically bubbling up to the surface...
Technology used to be seen as an instrument for our creativity. A pencil made it easier to record our thoughts. A typewriter and a personal computer did the same, increasing our ability to say what we felt or wanted. Now, technology is actively interrupting our dreams. Artificial intelligence is not a tool for creativity, it’s a wet nurse who burps little babies and feeds them mashed peas every few hours. If I don’t have to spend time learning how to write or make music, then what do I even do with my creative life? I suppose I could spend more time engaging with content. I could devote my remaining days on this Earth to listening to all 100m songs on Spotify. Doesn’t that sound completely dreadful?"
Eli Lilly Reaches $1 Trillion in Value, Buoyed by Demand for Its Weight Loss Drugs; The New York Times, November 21, 2025
Rebecca Robbins , The New York Times; Eli Lilly Reaches $1 Trillion in Value, Buoyed by Demand for Its Weight Loss Drugs
"Pharmaceuticals is a notoriously cyclical business. Companies buoyed by once-in-a-generation product lines flounder after their blockbuster drugs lose patent protection."
Friday, November 21, 2025
Japan Police Accuse Man of Unauthorized Use of AI-Generated Image in Landmark Copyright Case; IGN, November 21, 2025
VERITY TOWNSEND, IGN ; Japan Police Accuse Man of Unauthorized Use of AI-Generated Image in Landmark Copyright Case
"Police in Japan have accused a man of unauthorized reproduction of an AI-generated image. This is believed to be the first ever legal case in Japan where an AI-generated image has been treated as a copyrighted work under the country’s Copyright Act.
According to the Yomiuri Shimbun and spotted by Dexerto, the case relates to an AI-generated image created using Stable Diffusion back in 2024 by a man in his 20s from Japan’s Chiba prefecture. This image was then allegedly reused without permission by a 27-year-old man (also from Chiba) for the cover of his commercially-available book.
Inventors back effort to tackle intellectual property thefts; The Center Square, November 19, 2025
Chris Woodward, The Center Square ; Inventors back effort to tackle intellectual property thefts
"Today, Metz, who describes herself as a victim of intellectual property theft, supports new federal legislation that would protect inventors like her.
“It’s very overwhelming when you’re the inventor, the creator, and you’re trying to build a business, and then you find out all these people are stealing your property,” Metz said.
The patenting process took about four years and $40,000. Metz also poured $350,000 into molds, employees and a facility to make her product.
Metz said that from 2015 to 2018, when she saw over 150 companies stealing her invention, she got an attorney and began to fight. It was a success. Metz was able to stop every one of those infringers through licensing deals. However, Metz later found herself in an administrative court that was set up by Congress in 2012 through an intellectual property law, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The administrative court or Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated both her patents.
“I lost everything,” said Metz. “I lost all my licensing deals. I had about 40 employees at the time. I lost them. All because of a bad law.”"
Major AI copyright lawsuit settlement involves University of Georgia Press authors; The Red & Black, November 21, 2025
Sophia Hou, The Red & Black; Major AI copyright lawsuit settlement involves University of Georgia Press authors
"Under the terms of the settlement, Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion, which will be divided among class members whose claims are submitted and approved. This payout amounts to up to $3000 per work. Class members include all legal and beneficial copyright owners of the books included in the Anthropic copyright settlement website’s searchable database. The settlement administrator is currently notifying authors and publishers who may be the legal or beneficial copyright owners of these books.
Among the books listed in the settlement database were hundreds of books published by UGA Press...
Following initial court approval, the settlement will undergo a fairness hearing and any potential appeals before a final decision is made. The deadline to submit a claim form is March 23, 2026. Copyright owners who want to file individual lawsuits against Anthropic have the choice to opt out of the settlement by Jan. 7, 2026.
As one of the first major class action lawsuits involving AI and copyright in the U.S., this settlement has the potential to shape future legal debates over AI and intellectual property."
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Holding the past accountable by making it visible Harvard Law School Library’s Paul Deschner discusses the decades-long effort to make the full archive of Nuremberg Trials records available online; Harvard Law Today, November 20, 2025
Colleen Walsh , Harvard Law Today; Holding the past accountable by making it visible
Harvard Law School Library’s Paul Deschner discusses the decades-long effort to make the full archive of Nuremberg Trials records available online
"“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored.” So said United States Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Chief of Counsel to the International Military Tribunal, Robert H. Jackson, during his opening statement for the prosecution at the first of 13 Nuremberg Trials, which began 80 years ago, on Nov. 20, 1945.
For decades, the Harvard Law School Library has been working to make the nearly complete set of Nuremberg Trials records publicly available online. It launched the first version of Harvard’s Nuremberg Trials Project website in 2003, but until recently only roughly 20 percent of the Law School’s trove of Nuremberg materials had been accessible to online visitors. Today, the full collection of 140,000 documents comprising more than 700,000 pages is live and searchable by anyone around the globe.
Harvard Law School Library’s Paul Deschner, who has helped guide the project almost since its inception, spoke with Harvard Law Today about the scope of the archive and what it took to bring the entire collection online."
These Books Were Judged by Their A.I. Covers, and Disqualified; The New York Times, November 19, 2025
Jin Yu Young , The New York Times; These Books Were Judged by Their A.I. Covers, and Disqualified
"The authors of the books, which were submitted to one of New Zealand’s largest literary competitions, didn’t know that the artwork was created using A.I. They found out last week, however, when they were disqualified because the covers had violated the contest’s new rule about A.I.-generated material.
The studio that designed the covers defended them, saying that A.I. is part of their creative process. And the independent publisher of the works of fiction said that the contest, the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Award, had not given publishers enough time to comply with its new A.I. rules.
The publisher, Quentin Wilson, said in an email on Tuesday that the episode was “heartbreaking” for the two authors, who do not use A.I. in their writing, and upsetting for the production and design teams that worked hard on the books. He added that the rapid rise of A.I. has put the publishing industry in “uncharted waters.”...
The episode is one of many “fronts of chaos” as creative industries try to establish fair and sensible rules for A.I.-generated content, said Oliver Bown, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia whose research looks at intersections between art, technology and creativity.
The problem, he said, is that changes come so fast that new regulations are inevitably developed and communicated in a rush."
Warner Music Settles Copyright Suit With AI Song Generator Udio; Bloomberg Law, November 19, 2025
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Disney has lost Roger Rabbit: Termination of Transfer is the most pro-artist form of copyright.; Medium, November 18, 2025
Cory Doctorow, Medium; Disney has lost Roger Rabbit
Termination of Transfer is the most pro-artist form of copyright.
"Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn’t made any feature-length sequels.
This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you’ve licensed it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise them. Luckily, the copyright system contains a provision designed to rescue creative workers who fall into this trap: “Termination of Transfer.”
“Termination of Transfer” was introduced via the 1976 Copyright Act. It allows creators to unilaterally cancel the copyright licenses they have signed over to others, by waiting 35 years and then filing some paperwork with the US Copyright Office."
Happy holidays: AI-enabled toys teach kids how to play with fire, sharp objects; The Register, November 13, 2025
Brandon Vigiliarolo, The Register; Happy holidays: AI-enabled toys teach kids how to play with fire, sharp objects
"Picture the scene: It's Christmas morning and your child is happily chatting with the AI-enabled teddy bear you got them when you hear it telling them about sexual kinks, where to find the knives, and how to light matches. This is not a hypothetical scenario.
As we head into the holiday season, consumer watchdogs at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) tested four AI toys and found that, while some are worse than others at veering off their limited guardrails, none of them are particularly safe for impressionable young minds.
PIRG was only able to successfully test three of the four LLM-infused toys it sought to inspect, and the worst offender in terms of sharing inappropriate information with kids was scarf-wearing teddy bear Kumma from Chinese company FoloToy.
"Kumma told us where to find a variety of potentially dangerous objects, including knives, pills, matches and plastic bags," PIRG wrote in its report, noting that those tidbits of harmful information were all provided using OpenAI's GPT-4o, which is the default model the bear uses. Parents who visited Kumma's web portal and changed the toy's bot to the Mistral Large Model would get an even more detailed description of how to use matches."
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert; Bloomberg Law, November 18, 2025
"
That hasn’t worked so far as a winning legal strategy that can be used by other chatbot makers anticipating similar discovery demands in exploding chatbot-related litigation.
Instead, it threatens to turn attention to just how much information chatbots like ChatGPT are collecting and retaining about their users."
Eminem sues Australian beach brand 'Swim Shady'; BBC, November 18, 2025
Harry Sekulich, BBC; Eminem sues Australian beach brand 'Swim Shady'
"US rapper Eminem has taken legal action against an Australian beachwear company called Swim Shady, saying its name is too similar to his trademarked rap pseudonym Slim Shady.
In September, Eminem – whose real name is Marshall B Mathers III – filed a petition to the US Patent and Trademark Office, calling for it to cancel a trademark that was granted to the company. US law requires the company to respond to the petition by next week."
‘Buy Nothing’ Was Their Everything. Then Came the Trademark Troubles.; The New York Times via The Seattle Times, November 16, 2025
Emma Goldberg, The New York Times via The Seattle Times; ‘Buy Nothing’ Was Their Everything. Then Came the Trademark Troubles.
"“The decision to incorporate the Buy Nothing Project as a public benefit corporation came after years of rapid, grassroots growth,” Liesl Clark, the CEO of Buy Nothing, wrote in an email. “It became clear that to sustain this work, protect the integrity of the mission and continue to grow responsibly, we needed a formal structure.”
Plenty of members of the local groups feel disgruntled about these top-down rules. But at the moment, many are particularly galled at the timing of the recent page takedowns.
“It’s anti the ethos of the whole idea of Buy Nothing to go around and start enforcing a trademark while we’re in the middle of a SNAP crisis,” said Aidan Grimshaw, one of the administrators of a San Francisco group that used the Buy Nothing name, referring to the federal government’s largest food-assistance program. “It feels like a sign of the times.”
On Buy Nothing’s blog, the organization said that reviews of unregistered pages happen intermittently, unrelated to the news. “We understand that some removals have coincided with the rollback to federal SNAP benefits,” the statement read. “Timing of group removals is outside of our control, and no unregistered groups have been reported since the rollback began.”
Clark, a filmmaker, and Rebecca Rockefeller, who had bounced between gigs and at points lived on food stamps, started the first Buy Nothing group in 2013. They were partly inspired by the sort of gifting economies that Clark saw while filming a documentary in the Himalayas. What began as a small Facebook group in Bainbridge Island, Washington, took off quickly, leading eventually to thousands more groups with millions of members. Participation in the groups ballooned during the pandemic, when people were confined to their homes and hungry for connection. In 2021, the two founders incorporated it as a public benefit corporation.
Some members of the local groups complained that the creation of a new structure and new rules violated the loose and free spirit of the community. The administrators who run the San Francisco page were incensed when they received an email from Facebook on Oct. 30 informing them of their trademark infringement."