Posts in Copyright

The U.S. Supreme Court today granted certiorari to a petition brought by internet service provider (ISP) Grande Communications Networks LLC, appealing from a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision that upheld a jury verdict holding Grande Communications liable for contributory infringement against a group of major U.S. record labels. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and then vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration under the Court’s recent opinion in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment.

Opponents of the “Pro Codes Act” are speaking out this week following its recent reintroduction in the U.S. Senate. The Protecting and Enhancing Public Access to Codes (Pro Codes) Act of 2026, S. 4145, was reintroduced on March 19 by Senators Jon Cornyn, Chris Coons, Mazie Hirono, and Thom Tillis. According to the bill’s sponsors, the legislation “ensures safety standards do not lose copyright protection when they are incorporated into law by name so long as they are accessible for free on a publicly available website.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruling that internet service provider Cox Communications, Inc., is not contributorily liable for its subscribers’ copyright infringement. In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Thomas, the Court held that a service provider is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only when it intended for its service to be used in that way, which is established only if the provider either encouraged the infringement or designed the service specifically to facilitate it.

Although I am not an attorney, I have been deeply enmeshed in the patent process as an inventor for three decades. And I have grown an appreciation for your profession that is perhaps deeper than most folks’. The majority of my work over the past 30 years has been in AI and machine learning. And I want to share some thoughts with you today about how all of this intersects and how you, everyone in this room, are really the last line of defense that humanity has in maintaining what it means to be human. 

Spurred by reports that House leaders are trying to fast-track a bill to separate the U.S. Copyright Office from the Library of Congress, a coalition of consumer rights, industry, open internet and library groups has again sent a letter to the House Committee on Administration urging it to consider the bill on the regular timeline to avoid “unintended consequences.” A full committee markup of the bill is scheduled for tomorrow, March 18,

Yesterday, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, and Peter Welch (D-VT) sent a letter addressed to Liang Rubo, CEO of Chinese technology company ByteDance, urging the immediate shutdown of ByteDance’s video generation platform Seedance 2.0. Calling ByteDance’s recent pledges to respect copyright “a delay tactic,” the Senators join a growing chorus of copyright advocates raising alarms about rampant infringement being committed by users of Seedance and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) today released its 2026 International IP Index, which flagged concerning trends about the “growing erosion of IP leadership” among the world’s high-performing economies, according to the report’s authors. In particular, the report noted that scores in eight EU Member States have declined this year, although the top ten rankings remained the same from 2025. The United States was again number one, with a relatively stable score of 95.15% compared with last year’s 95.17%.

Just over a month ago, the Human Artistry Campaign launched “Stealing Isn’t Innovation”—a graphic advertising campaign backed by over 1,000 artists, performers, authors, organizations and other creators. The Copyright Alliance joined dozens of groups and organizations supporting this powerful moment of creative community unity and strength. The campaign’s high-level three-word-message was simple and obvious, and difficult to contest. On a policy level, the campaign was widely, and correctly, understood as a clear statement supporting the core principle that training AI models on copyrighted works should be licensed by willing buyers and sellers.  “Big AI” published its response to this campaign in late February, speaking through two tech-aligned proxies—the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI) and Public Knowledge (PK). For a number of reasons, it’s deeply unpersuasive. 

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list including the denial of a petition for writ of certiorari filed by Dr. Stephen Thaler that challenged federal agency and court rulings preventing copyright registration for an image generated entirely by artificial intelligence (AI). In following the U.S. Solicitor General’s call to deny cert to Thaler’s appeal, the Supreme Court declined invitations from both sides of the AI authorship debate to clarify the copyrightability of works that are substantially AI-generated.

Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, respectively, sent a letter on Thursday to Director of the American Law Institute Diane Wood asking for answers to 14 questions about the latest Copyright Restatement Project. The letter follows mass resignations from the project last year over concerns about the final product. Specifically, key copyright proponents resigned over what one of those who resigned, Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid, referred to as “a general undercurrent of anti-copyright sentiment that…manifests itself through a disproportionate focus on atypical court decisions that limit the scope of copyright protection.”

In 1924, several changes were wrought to the format of the Olympic Games that remain permanent features more than a century later as the 2026 Winter Olympics take place in Milan Cortina. That year featured the first lodging for athletes in what would become the Olympic Village, the first radio broadcasts of live Olympic events, and the first edition of the Winter Olympics as a separate event for the summer games. Figure skating events were among the games introduced at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, and a century later, the international competition has been roiled by a series of copyright authorization issues leaving some skaters scrambling to change their routine and avoid infringement liability.

The U.S. Copyright Office on Friday released its report pursuant to the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act, finding that the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is largely successful but that there is “room for improvement in various respects.” The Copyright Claims Board (CCB), established by the December 2020 CASE Act, is an alternative to federal court where copyright owners can bring suits before a tribunal at the Copyright Office.

As the AI revolution accelerates and continues to reshape traditional business models, it has triggered a cascade of new legal, regulatory and policy challenges. At the forefront of these emerging issues are a growing number of high-stakes legal battles between content creators and major Generative AI (GenAI) companies behind large language models (LLMs). This article examines key legal themes and critical questions arising from recent developments at the intersection of AI and Copyright law.

On Tuesday, news reports indicated that U.S. Senators Adam Schiff (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT) introduced the Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting (CLEAR) Act into Congress. If enacted as drafted, the bill would establish mandatory reporting requirements for companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) models that are trained using original works that are protected under U.S. copyright law, and would create an additional cause of action for copyright owners alleging that generative AI developers failed to give such notice with respect to their works.