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 . …
Category: technology
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 …
DEA Confirms Cannabis Rescheduling
It was announced that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the federal agency responsible for enforcement of federal drug laws, will take up the recommendation from the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS), and reschedule marijuana (cannabis) from the current Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Rescheduling will have major …
Ninth Circuit: No SHIFT+DELETE for Server Test
The issues where technology and intellectual property laws collide were discussed in the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Hunley v. Instagram, LLC,[1] decided on July 17, 2023. In Hunley, the Ninth Circuit re-affirmed the so-called Server Test limiting liability for copyright infringement. Facts Plaintiffs Alexis Hunley and Matthew Brauer both posted their photographic works on their …
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, …
U.S. Patent No. D861,725 S1: CES Edition
U.S. Patent No. D861,725 S (‘725) issued on October 1, 2019, for “Display Screen with Animated Icon.” It was issued to inventors Hélène Park and Alan Bettes of San Francisco, California, and Sidney Paolo San Martín of Brooklyn, New York. The applicant/assignee is Google LLC of Mountain View, California. This patent is a design patent …
U.S. Patent No. 10,336,597 B2
U.S. Patent No. 10,336,597 B2 (‘597) issued on July 2, 2019, for “Capsule-Based Alcoholic Beverage Apparatus and Components Thereof.” It was issued to inventors Ross Franklin of Rancho Cucamonga, California, Ed Rosenthal of Oakland, California, and Rachel Franklin of Rancho Cucamonga, California. The applicant is ERS Holdings, LLC of Piedmont, California, and the assignee is …
TechPat: U.S. Patent No. 10,241,896 B2
The DreamForce 2019 conference will be held in San Francisco from November 19-22, 2019. To commemorate DreamForce, the blog will highlight a recently-issued Salesforce, Inc. patent. U.S. Patent No. 10,241,896 B2 (‘896), issued on March 26, 2019, for “Formation and Manipulation of Test Data in a Database System.” The inventor is Jameison Bear Martin of …