March 2025 Roundup of Copyright News — The Copyright Alliance’s Rachel Kim reviews a busy month in copyright developments, with activity from the US Copyright Office, the Executive Branch, Congress, courts, and beyond.
Unfair Learning: GenAI Exceptionalism and Copyright Law — “This paper challenges the argument that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is entitled to broad immunity from copyright law for reproducing copyrighted works without authorization due to a fair use defense. It examines fair use legal arguments and eight distinct substantive arguments, contending that every legal and substantive argument favoring fair use for GenAI applies equally, if not more so, to humans.”
Music copyright group mandates ‘no AI use’ for new songs — “The Korea Music Copyright Association recently implemented a procedure for registering a new song, requiring songwriters to verify that they did not use artificial intelligence, reaffirming its stance that AI-generated music cannot be copyrighted.”
US authors’ copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft combined in New York with newspaper actions — “Twelve US copyright cases against OpenAI and Microsoft have been consolidated in New York, despite most of the authors and news outlets suing the companies being opposed to centralisation. A transfer order made by the US judicial panel on multidistrict litigation on Thursday said that centralisation will ‘allow a single judge to coordinate discovery, streamline pretrial proceedings, and eliminate inconsistent rulings’.”
Counterclaim for copyright invalidity is not a ‘mirror image’ of an infringement claim — The court refused to dismiss the counterclaim as to invalidity of the copyright. The designer argued that the counterclaim was a ‘mirror image’ claim that was duplicative and redundant of the complaint itself. But the court disagreed. A counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment is not duplicative or redundant, the court noted, ‘if it asserts an independent case or controversy which would remain viable after a dismissal of the plaintiff’s claim.'”