Christiane Schuman Campbell, vice chair of Duane Morris’ Intellectual Property Practice Group and team lead of the Fashion/Retail/Consumer Branded Products industry group, is featured on the CGTN America segment, “Global Business: The Fight Against Fake Luxury.”
Northern District of California Decides AI Training Is Fair Use, but Pirating Books May Still Be Infringing
Two groundbreaking decisions from the Northern District of California—Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. and Bartz v. Anthropic PBC—shed light on how courts are approaching the use of copyrighted materials in training large language models (LLMs). Both cases involved authors alleging copyright infringement based on the use of their books to train generative AI models, and both courts held that use of the copyrighted materials to train the AI models was transformative. The court in Anthropic held, however, that copying pirated books constitutes copyright infringement and the transformative nature of the use did not rescue such infringement. Conversely, the Meta court held that copying from pirate sites to train AI is fair use, but only because the plaintiffs failed to submit evidence of market harm, which the court believed to be the most relevant factor. As such, while use of copyrighted works to train AI may be fair use, copying works without permission carries the risk of infringement. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.
Webinar Replay: Key Federal and State AI Legal Developments Impacting Employment Decisions, Privacy Rights, Vendor Management and IP Practices
Five Human Best Practices to Mitigate the Risk of AI Hiring Tool Noncompliance with Antidiscrimination Statutes
Justin Donoho authored the article “Five Human Best Practices to Mitigate the Risk of AI Hiring Tool Noncompliance with Antidiscrimination Statutes” for the Journal of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Law. Read the full article.
May 15 Event: Get Smart with AI: AI Policy Drafting Quest – CLE, Tabletop Exercise and Networking
Duane Morris LLP will present Get Smart with AI: AI Policy Drafting Quest – CLE, Tabletop Exercise and Networking on Thursday, May 15 , 2025.
Continue reading “May 15 Event: Get Smart with AI: AI Policy Drafting Quest – CLE, Tabletop Exercise and Networking”3 Tips for Employers Using AI Interviewing Tools
Duane Morris partner Alex Karasik is quoted in the Law360 article, “3 Tips For Employers Using AI Interviewing Tools.”
He tells Law360 “that while aggressive regulation or litigation from the federal level seems unlikely in the near future, employers still need to be proactive about potential AI bias because states and the plaintiffs bar are homing in.
“Even though AI-related technologies are streamlining employment processes exponentially by the day, there still is a required human element[.] Because a human needs to be able to understand when these unique one-off situations may come up, where an applicant or employee needs an accommodation. And a human needs to have the agility to adapt and apply that accommodation request appropriately and lawfully.”
Webinar: Key Federal and State AI Legal Developments Impacting Employment Decisions, Privacy Rights, Vendor Management and IP Practices
Duane Morris will present a Zoom Event, Key Federal and State AI Legal Developments Impacting Employment Decisions, Privacy Rights, Vendor Management and IP Practices, on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern | 12:00 p.m. Pacific.
How an AI Case Affects Animal Law
On March 18. 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that a work created with artificial intelligence (AI) using a machine cannot be registered in the name of the machine itself because the Copyright Act requires that a copyright owner be a human being. Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233 (D.C. Cir. Mar. 18, 2025).
In fact, the D.C. Circuit made a specific connection to animal law by citing the decision in Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018), in which the Ninth Circuit held that a monkey cannot be an “author” under the Copyright Act. And, like Thaler, animal rights groups have tried to base their arguments on dictionary definitions. Read more on the Animal Law Developments Blog.
Trade Secrets Law Is Awkward Fit in AI Prompt-Hacking Lawsuit
Duane Morris partner Agatha Liu is quoted in the Bloomberg Law article, “Trade Secrets Law Is Awkward Fit in AI Prompt-Hacking Lawsuit,” about a medical AI company’s novel trade secrets lawsuit that illustrates the challenges artificial intelligence presents for protecting proprietary information.
Liu said hacking AI to reveal its prompts is “not a good thing, but it’s not terribly illegal.” AI developers most likely will have to stay on top of the best practices to craft their products to save them from themselves she said.
“If you want to reduce risk, you need to up the ante and make your system more resilient and context-aware,” Liu said.
Generative AI Training Case Flags Competition as Major Factor
Duane Morris attorneys Jennifer Lantz, Jeremy Elman and Max DiBaise authored the Bloomberg Law article, “Generative AI Training Case Flags Competition as Major Factor,” exploring what the Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence decision’s novel application of the “fair use” defense of copyright law means for generative AI training.
Companies must be mindful of the ultimate purpose of new artificial intelligence tools to avoid running into copyright infringement issues during the training process. If widely adopted, the Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence decision suggests “intermediate copying” cases are unlikely to provide a strong defense when the final output of a tool mirrors the products it was trained on. Accordingly, the key question is likely to what extent the AI system is competing with the underlying copyrighted work. The further away the system is, the more likely it is to be protected under the fair-use doctrine. Read the full article on the Bloomberg Law website.