Happy New Year!
Anthropic Agrees to Enforce Copyright Guardrails on New AI Tools — “Plaintiffs sued Anthropic in October 2023 and sought an injunction in August, arguing it’s necessary to stop infringement of their works. Anthropic opposed the motion, arguing fair use over its adoption of the material to train its models since the AI tool was transforming the content, while claiming publishers hadn’t demonstrated irreparable harm without an injunction.”
How the Copyright Claims Board Can Lighten the Federal Court Docket — “The Copyright Claims Board (CCB), established by the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act of 2020 in December 2020, and operational since June 16, 2022, is a voluntary government tribunal offering an alternative to federal court for copyright claims with damages of no more than $30,000 at stake. One lesser-known feature of the CCB is that it can help alleviate the pressure of an over-burdened federal court docket by hearing and deciding small copyright claims, including ones already filed in federal court.”
Voluntary Dismissals and Attorney Fees — “The Copyright Act and the Patent Act each include an attorney fee provision — permitting the district court to award ‘a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party.’ … On the Copyright side, there is a growing circuit split on the issue of whether defendants can recover attorney’s fees after a plaintiff voluntarily dismisses under Rule 41(a)(1). … Property Matters recently petitioned to the Supreme Court for review.”
[Event Report] 34th IPA Congress — “[T]he International Publishers Association (IPA) held the event. The Mexican Publishers Association (CANIEM) hosted the bi-annual congress in collaboration with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and in coordination with the Guadalajara International Book Fair. The programme covered relevant aspects of the publishing sector, including copyright, industry cooperation, freedom to publish and the Sustainable Development Goals.”
OpenAI’s Promised Media Manager Tool Remains in Limbo Amid Copyright Concerns — “Media Manager was pitched as a tool to identify copyrighted content and provide creators with control over whether their works are included in OpenAI’s AI training datasets. It was intended to mend concerns from creators and fend off ongoing legal challenges regarding copyright violations. However, according to sources familiar with the project, the said tool never seemed to be a high priority internally.”