Copyright Law
Copyright Cases (Links and pdfs on "Readings" tab)
Court Opinion: Thaler v Perlmutter
Stephen Thaler v Shira Perlmutter, the Director of the US Office of Copyright.
"He sought to register the work for a copyright, listing the computer system as the author and explaining that the copyright should transfer to him as the owner of the machine. The Copyright Office denied the application on the grounds that the work lacked human authorship, a prerequisite for a valid copyright to issue, in the view of the Register of Copyrights."
Copyright will only be granted to human authors. Working with an AI is collaboration with another creative entity. Work with an AI is not eligible for all copyright protections. The AI can be listed as a co-author, but not granted copyright protections.
Zarya of the Dawn, by Kristina Kashtanova
A book was written by the author. Some of the images were created by an AI, Midjourney. The author edited some of those works in Adobe's Photoshop. The book, a graphic novel, includes the words of the author and the images, some created by an AI. Because the illustrations are not the work of a human, the author has copyright to the words of the text and to the arrangement of the images, but not to the images themselves. The images, not created by a human, are therefore not under copyright.
Two issues come out of this finding. One, works created by AI are not the work of a human and therefore NOT eligible of copyright or patents. Two, the tricky situation about Adobe Photoshop. Adobe's tools used to be under control of the human. Now, Adobe Photoshop includes some AI tools. In the case of an image created by a human and then edited without the use of AI tools, it would be considered a human creation and eligible for copyright. BUT, an image created by a human and then edited with Photoshop's new AI tools, it would be considered a collaboration and not the work of an individual human. It would NOT be eligible for copyright.
Patent Cases (Links and pdfs on "Readings" tab)
Court Case: Thaler v Vidal
Stephen Vidal, Plaintiff-Appellant v Katherine K. Vidal, Director of US Patent and Trademark Office
"This case presents the question of who, or what, can be an inventor. Specifically, we are asked to decide if an artificial intelligence (AI) software system can be listed as the inventor on a patent application." "The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) undertook the same analysis and concluded that the Patent Act defines “inventor” as limited to natural persons; that is, human beings."
Patent was denied the AI because patents can only be granted to works created by humans. Patent holders must be human. The AI can be listed as co-inventor, but will not have rights. All rights AND responsibilities, as a patent holder, belong to the human. The AI cannot be sued, but the human can.
Music Sampling as Case Study
** WORK IN PROGRESS
[This will discuss intellectual property law / copyright and how music sampling skirts the law by entering into fair use arena. Also, any of our art students should be introduced to copyright so that they learn to protect their works before they begin to search for a job and share "portfolios" of their work.
[Some aspects of sampling come close to AIs are doing
TurnItIn.com as Case Study (iParadigm is the Parent Company Name)
The appeals court upheld the district court: archiving student work for the purpose of detecting plagiarism constituted fair use. It deemed the use transformative because it was unrelated to the works’ expressive content and was instead aimed at detecting and discouraging plagiarism. The court further held that the use did not undermine plaintiffs’ right of first publication, because iParadigms did not publicly disseminate the works or make them available to any third party except the school. - From the Summary of the case
What that means, or should mean, for AI companies that train on millions of works, including some that are under copyright:
1 - It should constitute fair use BECAUSE it is not "archiving" the work, but using it in bits and pieces for the purpose of learning writing skills. It ingests works in order to learn proper grammar and phrasing.
2 - It is transformative because the AI doesn't spew out an entire work that it trained on, but instead, rephrases common thoughts and creates new output.
3 - The AIs are not disseminating the work and thus are not effecting the market value of a work, even one under copyright. Again, the AI will not regurgitate an entire work, word-for-word, because that is not its training. If it did, that may be a copyright violation because it may be interfering in the market value of the work. AI companies make it very difficult to force an AI to reveal any training material for this exact reason.