Category: Intellectual property and its discontents
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The Federal Circuit has affirmed the denial of copyright protection to an AI-generated image on the grounds that copyright requires a human author. As far as I know this was the expected outcome; I certainly think it’s correct. I talked about the case a bit and made a couple of policy arguments against AI copyright…
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Another case percolating through the system, this one about Westlaw headnotes. The judge basically ruled against a series of motions for summary judgment, which means that the case is going to a jury. Discussion here (link via Copyhype)
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By Gordon Hull This one has been percolating a while… Steven Thaler’s AI created a picture (below the fold), and Thaler has been using it to push for the copyrightability of AI-generated material. That endeavor has been getting nowhere, and a DC District Court just ruled on the question of “whether a work generated autonomously…
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in refusing to grant copyright registration to an AI creation. I suspect this one to be litigated for a while, since the person who has been trying to get protection for the picture has declared limiting copyright to human authors as something that would be unconstitutional (I also think it would be pretty entertaining to…
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My further thoughts on the background through which we should interpret Covid patent waivers, at Real Life.
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By Gordon Hull Update (4/30). Essential piece by Amy Kapczynski (who is one of my sources below). Also see this Twitter thread by Dennis Crouch of PatentlyO, characterizing the issue as one of technology transfer more generally than patents specifically. Trade secrets are an important issue – like patents, they allow companies to control access…
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Recall that before Covid (so about 300 years ago), there was an interesting copyright case percolating through the federal courts. The question concerned the Official Georgia Code Annotated (OGCA), which contains the text of the Georgia Code as well as various annotations. There were two potentially conflicting principles at work. On the one hand, the…
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I'm very pleased to announce that my new book, The Biopolitics of Intellectual Property, is now out in print/electronically on Cambridge UP. Here's a blurb: "Intellectual property is power, but what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, this study examines different ways of understanding…
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By Gordon Hull As I noted last time, the Supreme Court has decided to take up a case about copyright in state codes. Specifically, Georgia contracts with Lexis to produce an annotated version of its code, which is the state then blesses with the title “Official Georgia Code Annotated” and claims copyright in. The question…
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There is an interesting copyright case before the Supreme Court this term, Georgia v. Public Resource.org. It is settled law that official edicts of the government – statutory texts, judicial opinions, agency rules – are not copyrightable. More about that in a moment. In this case, Georgia entered into a contract with Lexis to produce…
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