In today’s digital economy, subscription-based content platforms like OnlyFans, JustforFans, Vimeo, Patreon, and YouTube have created unprecedented opportunities for creators to monetize their work directly to the consuming public. However, these opportunities come with complex intellectual property (IP) considerations that content creators must understand to protect their rights and avoid potential legal issues. Copyright Fundamentals …
Category: authorship
AI Works Not Eligible for Copyright Registration
Consistency in intellectual property regimes is essential for a uniform practice of those intellectual property laws. Case in point is Thaler v. Perlmutter, a copyright case holding that works created by artificial intelligence software is not a human author for purposes of the Copyright Act of 1976 (See 17 U.S.C. §102(a) (“Copyright protection subsists . …
Notes on Copyright Registration of AI-Assisted Works
On January 31, 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office issued examination guidelines related to registration of works either assisted or generated by artificial intelligence tools. This blog discussed these guidelines in an earlier post. While there has been much angst as to the guidelines’ impact on creative endeavors involving AI-assisted works, it appears there are some …
Copyright Office’s Registration AI Guidance
The U.S. Copyright Office issued its second report on issues related to registration of works using artificial intelligence (AI). The second report, issued on January 29, 2025, discusses copyrightability and application-related issues. The Copyright Office’s analysis of the legal framework is not surprising given the fairly well-settled nature of the case law landscape. The constitutional …
U.S. Copyright Office Clarifies Registration of AI-Created Works
In order to clarify policy-related issues involving artificial intelligence and the copyright law issue of authorship, the U.S. Copyright Office, on March 16, 2023, commenced an AI initiative. Included in this initiative was new registration guidance (to be codified as 37 C.F.R. §202) aimed at assisting practitioners and industry members on protection of creative works …
Copyright Office Partially Cancels AI-Created Work
On February 21, 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office issued an unusual ruling partially cancelling the copyright registration originally issued in September 2022, essentially cancelling any part of the work made by an AI machine. A new registration will be re-issued as to the portions in which the human authorship was confirmed, including the selection, coordination, …
Spread Some LOVE . . . Or Not
Today, May 1, is Global Love Day. To commemorate the day, we spotlight ”love,” specifically the trademark registrations and copyright applications for LOVE. Registrant At World Properties, LLC, a real estate brokerage company based in Chicago, Illinois, registered two marks with the USPTO, one each stylized trademark and service mark for LOVE®. The first …
In U.S., Only Humans Can Be Inventors or Creators
In the U.S., patents are issued to inventors and copyrights are registered to authors. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been gaining traction in automation of business processes, creating more efficient applications, and gathering of data analysis. However, as seen with the recent U.S. Copyright Office’s recent Copyright Review Board’s (CRB) decision demonstrates that under U.S. copyright …
Collecting Royalties Indicative of Authorship, not Work for Hire
On August 21, 2019, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in an interesting example of what is deemed “work for hire,” as defined by the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §201(b), in Morricone Music Inc. v. Bixio Music Group Ltd..[1] Ennio Morricone is the late Italian composer of several musical film scores, which …