Laura D. Francis, Bloomberg Law; Disney’s Copyright Suit Against Chinese AI Developer Advances
"The
Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros.—as well as their subsidiaries—convinced the US District Court for the Central District of California Friday that they made plausible claims that Hailuo AI’s ability to generate near-perfect likenesses of their well-known characters constituted both direct and secondary infringement."
Aimee Ortiz, The New York Times; It’s a Copyright Lawsuit, Charlie Brown
"The owner of music used in “Peanuts” animated specials, including the memorable holiday classic “O Tannenbaum” and the unmistakable “Linus and Lucy” tunes, sued three companies and the U.S. Department of the Interior on Wednesday. It accused them of using its captivating bops in social media posts and a video game without permission.
Lee Mendelson Film Productions filed the copyright infringement suits in federal courts in New York and Washington, D.C. The songs are part of the programs that brought Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang from Charles Schulz’s comic strips off the page and into families’ living rooms...
According to the lawsuit, the Interior Department used “O Tannenbaum” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in a digital holiday card posted in December to social media without permission."
Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly; Court Rules Against Anna’s Archive in Copyright Lawsuit
"Publishers scored a quick victory in their attempt to stop the pirate website Anna’s Archive from illegally copying and selling their copyrighted material.
In a decision handed down May 19, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued a default judgment ordering the pirate website to immediately cease copying and distributing millions of files that it had illegally downloaded."
ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement is getting messy as judge delays approval
"After several authors and class members raised objections to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement over its widespread book piracy to train AI, a federal judge has delayed final approvals of the settlement.
On Thursday, US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin declined to rubber-stamp what’s regarded as the largest copyright settlement in US history. Instead, she wanted to better understand why some class members were objecting and opting out of the settlement. So, she asked authors to address key concerns of objectors, who argued that lawyers’ compensation was way too high and payments to class members were a “pittance.”...
Objectors may not win every fight, but they have seemingly persuaded the court to at least entertain their strongly worded pleas, including warnings that the settlement may not survive an appeal if the terms aren’t re-examined. Notably, their objections came shortly before a group of 25 class members opting out of the settlement filed a new lawsuit, showing that Anthropic is not done fighting these claims.
“For the Court to agree that counsel’s request of nearly a third of a billion dollars, while individual plaintiffs settle for a pittance of available compensation and no protections against future abuse is an aberration of civil justice and a slap in the face to all those who labored to publish their works,” Story said. “Such a decision would also further the too-often-observed stereotype that … class-action Plaintiffs are merely tools used to obtain Powerball-size payouts to attorneys.”
Judge William Alsup, who initially approved the settlement but has since retired, also questioned whether the lawyers’ fees were too high. Worried that the settlement was being “shoved down the throat of authors,” he recommended an independent investigation to ensure no improper attorneys’ fees would be granted, but according to Lea Bishop, a non-class member objector and professor of copyright law, the recommendation “was not squarely disclosed to incoming Judge Martinez-Olguin” in a status report submitted by authors’ lawyers. Additionally, class members weren’t notified of the investigation.
Authors must respond to objections raised by May 21, when Anthropic will also have to file a brief explaining “why late opt outs should not be honored,” the judge ordered."
MARGARET ATTRIDGE , Courthouse News Service; Authors, publishers near final approval of $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright settlement
"Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, a Joe Biden appointee, allowed objectors to address the court, where several spoke about the concerns they had with how the plaintiffs put together the eligible works list.
One class member told the judge that the works list undercounts the number of eligible works in the class by treating each copyright registration number as a single work, regardless of how many books are covered by the registration. The class member explained that she has certain group copyright registration numbers that include 40 separate, independently published novels under one registration number, all of which were downloaded by Anthropic without permission. However, under the current terms of the settlement agreement, the novels would be considered just one claimable work.
Another class member spoke to the exclusion of works that were published under a pseudonym, disadvantageous to small publishers and self-published authors in the class, while a third said they believed a one-time payment was not enough because Anthropic was continuing to profit off the copyrighted work they stole.
James H. Bartolomei III of Duncan Firm, an attorney representing four other objectors, asked the court to reopen the opt-out period as certain key documents from the case were only uploaded to the settlement website recently.
“Nothing I am asking for takes a dollar away from any class member who filed a claim. I’m not asking the court to stop the settlement from ever being approved. Just for sufficient information to make an informed choice,” he said."
Colleen Cabili , Quarz; Shein accuses Temu of copyright infringement on 'industrial scale'
"Shein accused rival Temu of copyright infringement "on an industrial scale" as a two-week trial opened Monday at London's High Court, with Temu firing back that the lawsuit was designed to stifle competition rather than protect intellectual property."
JON BRODKIN, Ars Technica ; Sony’s failed war against Internet piracy may doom other copyright lawsuits
"Sony and other major record labels recently suffered a thorough defeat at the Supreme Court in their attempt to make Internet service providers pay huge financial penalties for their customers’ copyright infringement. Sony’s loss is certain to have wide-ranging effects on copyright lawsuits, offering protection for ISPs, their customers, and potentially other technology companies whose services can be used for both legal and illegal purposes.
In Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Supreme Court ruled that cable Internet firm Cox is not liable under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when its customers use their broadband connections to download or upload pirated materials."
Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel; Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over Annie Leibovitz’s ‘Star Wars’ Photos
"An appeals court has revived Annie Leibovitz’s agency’s copyright lawsuit against an online magazine over its use of her photographs from the Star Wars movie set.
On Tuesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court wrongly dismissed the lawsuit brought by licensing company Great Bowery Inc. against online outlet Consequence Sound LLC based on a lower court’s misunderstanding of copyright law.
The dispute centers on a group of Star Wars cast photographs taken by Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. In 2014, Leibovitz signed an “Artist Agreement” with Trunk Archive, a business operated by Great Bowery, granting the company the “exclusive worldwide right to license, market, and promote” certain images from the shoot."
DEVON JAMES , Los Angeles Magazine; Meta’s AI Copyright Fight Just Escalated and Hollywood Is Watching Closely
A new lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg and Meta could reshape how studios, publishers and tech companies train the next generation of artificial intelligence
"The AI Gold Rush Is Running Into Copyright Law
According to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Meta allegedly pulled material from massive libraries of pirated books and scraped internet content to train Llama, the company’s flagship large language model. Publishers argue the practice amounts to one of the largest copyright violations in modern history."
HILLEL ITALIE , AP; Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege
"The plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg and Meta “followed their well-known motto ‘move fast and break things’” by illegally drawing upon a massive trove of books and journal articles for Llama."
Brooks Barnes, The New York Times ; ‘Avatar’ Suit Focuses on Hot Topic in A.I. Age: A Character’s Face
"An actress accused the director James Cameron of stealing her likeness to create an “Avatar” character in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California — a case that reflects a core fear among Hollywood performers in the artificial intelligence age: losing control of their own faces.
The actress, Q’orianka Kilcher, also sued Disney, which controls the multibillion-dollar “Avatar” franchise, which started in 2009...
The lawsuit involves Neytiri, the digitally created, blue-skinned warrior princess in Mr. Cameron’s three “Avatar” blockbusters. According to the complaint, Mr. Cameron used a photo of Ms. Kilcher as a teenager — without her knowledge — as the foundation for Neytiri, incorporating her features “directly into his production art” and digital production pipeline.
“Neytiri’s lips, chin, jawline and overall mouth shape” in the trilogy “are Q’orianka Kilcher’s,” the complaint said. “This was not a fleeting inspiration or a vague homage; it was a literal transplant of a real teenager’s facial structure.”
In 2010, Ms. Kilcher, who is also an Indigenous rights activist, met Mr. Cameron by chance at a charity event in Hollywood, where he told her that she was the “early inspiration” for Neytiri’s look, according to the complaint. “She did not take this to mean that her actual face had been replicated,” the complaint said.
Ms. Kilcher is suing now, the complaint said, because of an interview that Mr. Cameron gave to a French media outlet in 2024. In the interview, Mr. Cameron mentions Ms. Kilcher and “points to an image of Neytiri and says unambiguously: ‘This is actually her lower face,’” the complaint said. The interview came to her attention a year later."
Graham Bowley, The New York Times; $100 Million Award Made in Suit Over Unlicensed Robert Indiana Art
"An art publisher accused in a civil suit of isolating Robert Indiana, the artist, in the final years of his life, has been found to have created unauthorized or adulterated versions of Indiana’s work by a New York jury.
The jury in federal court in Manhattan found in favor of Indiana’s former business partner, the Morgan Art Foundation, a for-profit company, that sued the publisher, Michael McKenzie, on the grounds that he had interfered with its rights by making Indiana works that he did not have the authority to produce.
Among the works cited in the suit were some based on the most famous of Indiana’s works, a depiction of the word “love” in capital letters, with the L and a jauntily tilted O perched atop the V and E. The image is recreated in sculptures that sit in plazas in several cities and on coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets worldwide.
The jury awarded Morgan $102.2 million in damages."
Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic seeks pivotal court win in music publisher lawsuit over AI training
"Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has asked a California federal court to rule in its favor in a copyright lawsuit brought by music publishers Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO, arguing it made "fair use" of their song lyrics to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.
Anthropic's Monday filing addresses the key question for a wave of high-stakes copyright cases brought by creators against tech companies: is it legally permissible to copy millions of copyrighted works without permission to train AI models?...
The lawsuit is one of dozens of disputes between copyright owners such as authors and news outlets, and tech giants including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over the training of their AI systems. Amazon- and Google-backed Anthropic was the first major AI company to settle one of the cases, agreeing last yearto pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to resolve a class-action lawsuit."
MOLLY CRANE-NEWMAN , New York Daily News via Chicago Tribune; Judge slams key OpenAI witness in copyright infringement case for ‘hazy recollections’
"An unimpressed Manhattan judge ordered a corporate representative for OpenAI to undergo a second deposition after finding he failed to answer “even the simplest questions” the first time around about what the company has described as efforts to limit chatbots from stealing writers’ work.
Magistrate Judge Ona Wang, in a sharply-worded 11-page order Tuesday, said OpenAI had been put on notice that the company’s purported expert on plagiarism John Vincent “Vinnie” Monaco was woefully underprepared for his January deposition, ordering him to submit to 3.5 more hours of questioning that took place Wednesday.
In granting a motion from the Chicago Tribune, New York Times and other news outlets suing OpenAI to compel the additional testimony, Wang deferred ruling on a request for sanctions, saying it would depend on how Monaco fared in his do-over. She said she may issue fines or recommend some of his answers be deemed as admissions.
OpenAI has previously said that Monaco has more knowledge than any of its engineers about Project Giraffe, an internal operation which the company claims is designed to develop ways to limit its learning language models, or LLMs, from inadvertently regurgitating copyrighted works — the issue at the core of the ongoing Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit."
Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian; Federal jury rejects hymn copyright infringement claim against British composer
"A jury in Portland on Friday found that a British composer didn’t purloin musical passages of an American composer’s Christian hymn in a case that brought both musicians into a downtown federal courtroom to play the pieces.
The composers took turns using an electric keyboard positioned in front of the jury box during a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut.
The eight jurors got the case Thursday afternoon and spent less than a day deliberating before returning its verdict that Bernadette Farrell of London hadn’t copied notes from Vincent A. Ambrosetti’s “Emmanuel.”"
Jake Angelo, Fortune; The dictionaries are suing OpenAI for ‘massive’ copyright infringement, and say ChatGPT is starving publishers of revenue
"In a filing submitted to the Southern District of New York, the companies accuse OpenAI of cannibalizing the traffic and ad revenue that publishers depend on to survive. “ChatGPT starves web publishers, like [the] Plaintiffs, of revenue,” the complaint reads. Where a traditional search engine sends users to a publisher’s website, Britannica and Merriam-Webster allege ChatGPT instead absorbs the content and delivers a polished answer. It also alleges the AI company fed its LLM with researched and fact-checked work of the companies’ hundreds of human writers and editors...
In an apt example, the complaint describes a prompt asking “How does Merriam-Webster define plagiarize?” to which the model reportedly responded with a definition identical to the one found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The complaint adds that the dictionary has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office."
Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive; Music copyright case in Portland focuses on 12 bars from two Catholic hymns
"Two composers are dueling in court in a copyright infringement case this week in Portland over 12 bars of 26 notes in two Catholic hymns...
American composer Vincent A. Ambrosetti wrote the music and lyrics for “Emmanuel,” in 1980 and claims London-based composer Bernadette Farrell stole from his song to write her “Christ, Be Our Light,” in 1993."
MIKE PEARL , Gizmodo; ByteDance’s Controversial AI Video Model Reportedly on Hold Globally Due to Copyright Disputes
, CT Insider; Waterbury's Post University awarded $75.3M in copyright infringement lawsuit
"A federal jury composed of Connecticut residents has ordered the education software company Learneo to pay Post University more than $75.3 million in damages for distributing school-owned documents on its Course Hero platform.
The Hartford jury found the San Francisco-based company violated U.S. copyright law by hosting the documents without permission and altered the files to conceal the infringement, according to court records."
Sara Fischer, Axios; Nielsen's Gracenote sues OpenAI for copyright infringement
"How it works: Gracenote employs hundreds of editors who use human insight and judgment to create millions of narrative descriptions, original video descriptors, unique identifiers and other program identifiers that TV providers and other clients can use to help customers discover content.
For example, Gracenote editors described HBO's "Game of Thrones" as "the depiction of two power families — kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and honest men — playing a deadly game of control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and to sit atop the Iron Throne."
In the lawsuit, Gracenote alleges OpenAI scraped and used a near-exact copy of that descriptor when prompted by a ChatGPT user to describe "Game of Thrones."
It provides several other examples where, with minimal prompting, OpenAI's various ChatGPT models recite large portions of Gracenote's program descriptions verbatim.
Between the lines: Gracenote's entire Programs Database, which includes its metadata and the proprietary relational map its editors use to connect that data, is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office."
