Posts in Artificial Intelligence

In a Motion for Summary Judgment filed earlier this weekwith the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, AI artist Jason M. Allen requested that the court overturn the Copyright Office’s refusal to register his award-winning image “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” created with the AI system Midjourney. The U.S. Copyright Office Review Board previously denied registration for Allen’s artwork. The Review Board asserted that when AI produces complex works solely from a human prompt, the “traditional elements of authorship” are executed through the technology and not by the human user.

According to a Consent Motion filed Tuesday, August 26, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Anthropic has requested that its petition appealing a district court ruling on class certification and its Emergency Motion to stay district court proceedings pending disposition of that petition both be held in abeyance. The request is based on the execution by both Anthropic and plaintiffs, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, of “a binding term sheet intended to memorialize the terms of a proposed class settlement.”

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced an agreement with Google for the “Gemini for Government” platformto provide federal agencies with access to Google’s artificial intelligence and cloud services at discounted rates.Gemini is Google’s flagship generative AI chatbot, supporting text, image, video, and code generation across multiple platforms, including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet. Under the GSA agreement, which is valid through 2026, agencies can access Google’s AI-optimized and accredited commercial cloud services, Gemini models, and agentic capabilities.

In the latest episode of IPWatchdog Unleashed, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ted Wood—a unique figure whose career spans military service, engineering and patent law. After spending time both in-house and at Am Law 100 firms, today Ted is Managing Partner of Wood IP. Our conversation, which took place August 8, was not only interesting and fun but a testament to the diverse pathways one can take to success, both in life and, specifically, in the engineering and patent law fields.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Technology Engagement Center (C_TEC) today released its fourth annual report, titled “Empowering Small Business: The Impact of Technology on U.S. Small Business,” analyzing the important role of technology in small business operations, the unprecedented adoption rates of artificial intelligence (AI), and growing concerns about regulatory compliance. The report surveyed 3,870 U.S. small businesses with fewer than 250 employees between June 6 and June 26, 2025, highlighting how emerging technologies are reshaping America’s entrepreneurial sector.

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge William Alsup on Monday denied Anthropic’s motion to stay proceedings in Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC. Anthropic had sought to pause the case while pursuing appellate review of two rulings, one on fair use and the other on class certification. The order maintains the trial date set for December 1, 2025, and says the case proceedings must continue.

When the framers made provision for copyright law in the U.S. Constitution, they probably didn’t envision a system that favors the wealthy. Yet today, that’s what we’ve got. High litigation costs and slow-moving courts have turned copyright enforcement into a luxury good. Unless you’re sitting on a pile of cash, your rights are often fool’s gold.

Last week, reports surfaced that spokespeople from the European Commission had confirmed the official withdrawal of legislative draft proposals that would have increased the European Union’s (EU) regulatory oversight over both standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing and civil liability of artificial intelligence (AI) products and services. While the decision to abandon these proposals was first made public this February, the EU Commission’s official withdrawal underscores ongoing tensions between the tech lobby and consumer advocates in the AI sector.

Under current law, only natural persons can be inventors on a patent. But as AI systems become more sophisticated and domain-specific, questions emerge about whether the creators of such AI might contribute to the conception of inventions generated with their tools. Consider this scenario: a scientific researcher uses a highly specialized AI model (designed for, say, molecular drug design) to discover a new pharmaceutical compound. The human runs the model, evaluates outputs, and files a patent application claiming the new compound. Is the AI’s developer – who trained and fine-tuned the model to solve such molecular design problems – a silent joint inventor of that compound?

The Trump Administration on Wednesday released a plan for keeping the United States competitive in the race to number one with respect to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Titled “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” the key policies would remove many of the restrictions on AI companies proposed by the Biden Administration’s AI plan, which was scrapped soon after Trump took office.

Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Monday, July 21, introduced the AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act, which would chiefly bar artificial intelligence (AI) companies from using copyrighted works to train their generative AI tools without authors’ permission. The bill was announced less than a week after Hawley held a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism in which he called generative AI companies’ use of copyrighted works to train their chatbots and other large language models (LLMs) “the largest IP theft in American history.”

On Wednesday, July 16, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing titled “Too Big to Prosecute?: Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training.” Subcommittee Chair Josh Hawley (R-MO) called generative AI companies’ use of copyrighted works to train their chatbots and other large language models (LLMs) “the largest IP theft in American history” and rejected the suggestion that the courts should determine the path forward.

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it was launching a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool for design patent examiners. DesignVision, a centralized tool for querying multiple industrial design data sources, is the latest move in the USPTO’s overall effort to address the patent examination backlog, which has involved both the introduction of AI-powered examination tools like DesignVision and the streamlining of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) activities through evolving standards for discretionary denials.

Following a June order of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on fair use in a case brought against generative AI tool Anthropic by a group of authors, Anthropic has now requested permission to file an interlocutory appeal. The underlying lawsuit was filed by journalists and book authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in August 2024 against Anthropic on behalf of a class of plaintiffs, alleging widespread copyright infringement of “hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.” The suit challenged only the inputs of the LLMs, not the outputs.

Thirty-one artists from across Europe posted videos today urging the EU Commission to “Stay True to the [AI] Act.” The slogan is part of a campaign that criticizes the EU’s implementation of the European Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which the campaign’s website says “should protect artists” but that the EU is instead “watering down the legislation – failing to hold AI companies to account.”