In the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s case Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (which we wrote about here), the parties reached a historic settlement. It aims to distribute $1.5 billion among authors and publishers whose pirated works were used to train Anthropic’s large language model called Claude. The datasets made from the…
In Re: OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation is another proposed class action by authors involving alleged infringement by large language models (LLMs). Here, the class would represent authors and copyright holders of fiction and non-fiction books who assert claims on their own and on behalf of the proposed class. Plaintiffs alleged OpenAI infringed their copyrights…
Richardson v. Kharbouch was a case we wrote about in February of 2024 that hinged on the difference between copyright in a composition and copyright in a sound recording. The case involved an ambitious, teen hip-hop artist known as Hotwire the Producer (Eddie Richardson), who crafted a unique beat that he later identified in the…
In Re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation addresses a class action of authors and visual artists against Google for direct copyright infringement, and its parent company, Alphabet, for vicarious infringement. This particular case stands out because the plaintiffs claim that copyright infringement occurred when the rightsholders’ works were copied into generative AI models, not that…
A muralist’s claim of copyright infringement had several false starts, a change of venue, and a stinging defeat on appeal – all of which could have been prevented.
A subpoena enforcement action in the Ninth Circuit concerned the movie studio Capstone Pictures’ DMCA claim against internet service provider Cox Communications. Capstone alleged that Cox violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) by not suspending the accounts of users who were downloading and sharing its movie Fall. At issue was section 512 (“512”) of…
Lorente-Garcia v. Giraldo-Navarro et al. was a case in the Southern District of Florida concerning two songs: 1998’s “Algo Diferente,” and 2021’s “Don’t Be Shy.” The composer of the earlier song filed suit against the singers of the new song, alleging copyright infringement. Unfortunately, plaintiff relied on a so-called “expert witness” who had been a…
Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC is an ongoing case in the Northern District of California that is of interest because it contains a small win for creators, at least in the context of this case. In another Anthropic case from the same district, a different judge dealt a more definitive blow to plaintiffs suing…
Martineau v. Bungie is a case from the Eastern District of Louisiana that pits a blogging David against a gaming Goliath that allegedly had to create a plot for one of its video games in a hurry. Matthew Kelsey Martineau filed a complaint against Bungie Inc. for infringement within the extremely popular, multiplayer game Destiny…
A children’s book author came to me about a demand letter she had received from another author’s lawyer. The letter alleged that there were “too many” similarities between our client’s book and the other author’s book, and that our client had infringed the other author’s copyright. The letter was accompanied by a chart like the…