Insights

In a unanimous opinion issued by the D.C. Circuit on March 18, 2025, the Court of Appeals affirmed denial of Dr. Stephen Thaler’s application to register a copyright protection for a work created by his generative artificial intelligence system, holding that the Copyright Act requires human authorship.

In what may be the first lawsuit of its kind, a student has sued Yale University alleging that he has been falsely accused of using artificial intelligence on a final exam. The complaint, filed in February, could have far-reaching implications for both the use of AI by students and issues related to academic honesty.

On February 20, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission launched an “inquiry” into “tech censorship” by calling for public comments from those who “may have been harmed by technology platforms that limited their ability to share ideas or affiliations freely and openly.” The deadline for comments is May 21, 2025.

The U.S. Copyright Office has released Part 2 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). This part of the Report, issued on January 29, 2025, focuses on the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. Overall, the Copyright Office concludes that existing law is sufficient to resolve questions of AI usage in copyrighted works, and sufficient human contributions to AI-generated outputs that would constitute authorship will be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. The Office declined to support a separate copyright registration analysis for AI works, but provided new examples of how using AI as a tool could support sufficient authorship for copyrightability.

Artificial intelligence is now a mainstay in our daily lives. It’s in our phones and computers. It helps us draft emails and learn math. It recommends purchases and guides our online searches. It’s everywhere—and every sign suggests that it’s here to stay.

On Sunday, September 29, 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, a bill to enact the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. Although the bill passed the California Assembly and Senate, it generated significant controversy and debate within the tech community. The Center for AI Safety, Elon Musk, the L.A. Times editorial board, and San Francisco-based AI startup Anthropic all supported the bill; while Meta, OpenAI, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposed it as hindering innovation.

On April 10, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Intellectual Property convened Part III to an ongoing discussion and exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property (IP) rights. The session, “Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: Part III - IP Protection for AI-Assisted Inventions and Creative Works,” delved into the nuanced debate over what IP protections should exist for AI-generated or AI-assisted works.

Although one wouldn’t typically look to the Federal Election Commission as a leader in setting regulations about intellectual property, the threat of deep fakes generated by artificial intelligence spurred recent action to prohibit the use of such images in the 2024 elections.[1] The urgency is obvious: peoples’ ability to use AI to create fake images has evolved much faster than the technology to detect it or the ability of regulators to manage it.[2] These concerns are not limited to politics: players in the music industry have been negotiating around the use of generative AI to create music that mimics established recording artists,[3] and lawsuits have already surfaced over deep-fake technology across the entertainment industry.[4] While there is no consensus on how this will affect these industries, or brands in general, Congress has recently taken more urgent actions as well, including the Senate subcommittee on Intellectual Property holding its second hearing in two months on the intersection of AI and the right of publicity.[5]

Judge William Orrick in the Northern District of California has dismissed some claims in a lawsuit brought by visual artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt. The artists allege that the companies misused the artist’s copyrighted works in connection with the companies’ generative artificial intelligence systems and products. Judge Orrick dismissed all allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt, but gave Plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint. Judge Orrick also dismissed copyright infringement claims brought by McKernan, Ortiz, and others in the artists’ class who had not obtained copyright registrations, a prerequisite to filing a copyright claim, but is allowing Andersen to pursue her claim that Stability AI's use of her work to train Stable Diffusion infringed her copyrights.

On August 30, 2023, the Copyright Office announced it would be seeking public comment on the use of copyrighted works to train Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), the copyrightability of AI outputs, whether AI-generated works infringe existing copyrights, and how to treat generative AI.

On June 23, 2023, a coalition of companies, including venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst and Founders Fund, and start-up defense technology companies, published an open letter to the Department of Defense (DoD), addressed to Secretary Lloyd J. Austin, petitioning DoD to consider procurement reform to help “overcome barriers to innovation.”  The group asserts these barriers create “antiquated methods for developing requirements and selecting technologies that have drastically limited” DoD’s access to “the best commercial innovation.”  In particular, the coalition endorsed adopting four recommendations pulled from a report by The Atlantic Council, a non-partisan international affairs think tank.

On November 21, 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed—after passing on the issue once before—to hear Jack Daniel’s (JDPI) challenge to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in VIP Prods. LLC v. Jack Daniel’s Props, where the Ninth Circuit affirmed without opinion the district court’s grant of summary judgment to VIP and the dismissal of JDPI’s trademark infringement claim,[1] on the grounds that JDPI could not satisfy either prong of the Rogers test. The Rogers test balances free expression under the First Amendment against the trademark protections of the Lanham Act. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the questions of whether parody uses of another’s mark receive First Amendment protection from liability under the Lanham Act and whether parody is exempt from claims of dilution by tarnishment under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(3)(C). The decision could clarify the balance between trademark and the First Amendment, an issue that has long-confounded practitioners.