Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Category Archives: Intellectual Property

IP – Stronger Fraud Risk Management Could Improve the Integrity of Trademark System

Intellectual Property: Stronger Fraud Risk Management Could Improve the Integrity of the Trademark System. Published: Mar 14, 2024. Publicly Released: Mar 14, 2024. “…The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (TMA) established two new procedures—expungement and reexamination—that allow individuals and businesses to challenge a registered trademark on the basis that it was not used in commerce, as is normally required. A successful challenge results in the trademark being removed from the register, thus making it available for potential use for the challenger or other applicants. GAO found that from December 2021 through June 2023 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and attorneys representing trademark owners filed nearly 500 petitions under the new procedures. Collectively, these petitions resulted in the removal of more than 2,500 falsely claimed goods and services from the trademark register. Trademark attorneys told GAO that the new procedures can be cost-effective and low-risk. Existing USPTO programs have also addressed inaccurate or false trademark applications and registrations. The agency’s post registration audit program removed trademarked goods and services in about half of its randomly selected audits each year from the start of the program in 2017. This suggests that there may be more than 1 million false and inaccurate registrations out of about 2.8 million overall due to an influx of applications, among other factors.”

Plagiarism doesn’t need AI to thrive online

Vox – A YouTuber’s deep dive on plagiarism tries to make viewers care when creators steal content: “Copying has always been a part of internet culture. Sometimes it’s ethical, sometimes not. It’s almost always incentivized: Once social media began reshaping online life, copying became a go-to tactic for getting views. When copying crosses an ethical… Continue Reading

Artists Lose First Round of Copyright Infringement Case Against AI Art Generators

Hollywood Reporter: “Artists suing generative artificial intelligence art generators have hit a stumbling block in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, with a federal judge’s dismissal of most claims. U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday found that copyright infringement… Continue Reading

Lessig on why AI and social media are causing a free speech crisis for the internet

The Verge: Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig – After 30 years teaching law, the internet policy legend is as worried as you’d think about AI and TikTok — and he has surprising thoughts about balancing free speech with protecting democracy. Nilay Patel: “…Larry and I talked about the current and recurring controversy around react videos on… Continue Reading

AI is learning from stolen intellectual property. It needs to stop.

Washington Post – William D. Cohan is a best-selling author and a founding partner of Puck News: “The other day someone sent me the searchable database published by The Atlantic that have been used to train the generative AI systems being developed by Meta, Bloomberg and others. It turns out that four of my seven… Continue Reading

These 183,000 Books Are Fueling the Biggest Fight in Publishing and Tech

The Atlantic – Editor’s note: This searchable database is part of The Atlantic’s series on Books3. You can read about the origins of the database here, and an analysis of what’s in it here. “This summer, I acquired a data set of more than 191,000 books that were used without permission to train generative-AI systems… Continue Reading

UK Guide on the use of Generative AI

UK Gov: Guide on the use of Generative AI – “Overview – Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools offer many potential benefits to Government of Canada (GC) institutions. Federal institutions should explore potential uses of generative AI tools for supporting and improving their operations. However, because these tools are evolving, they should not be used in… Continue Reading

UK Proposed principles to guide competitive AI markets and protect consumers

Gov.UK – September 18, 2023: “The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has today published a report following its initial review of foundation models (FMs) and has proposed principles which aim to ensure consumer protection and healthy competition are at the heart of responsible development and use of FMs. FMs are artificial intelligence (AI) systems with… Continue Reading

AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Judge Says in Ruling That Could Give Hollywood Studios Pause

Hollywood Reporter: “More than 100 days into the writers strike, fears have kept mounting over the possibility of studios deploying generative artificial intelligence to completely pen scripts. But intellectual property law has long said that copyrights are only granted to works created by humans, and that doesn’t look like it’s changing anytime soon. A federal… Continue Reading