IP BLAWG

Dr. Stephen Thaler created a generative artificial intelligence named the “Creativity Machine.” The Creativity Machine made a picture that Dr. Thaler titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Dr. Thaler tried to register the copyright in the work with the United States Copyright Office. On the application, Dr. Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s […]

On January 1 of each year, some copyrighted works fall into the public domain. That means, they are free for use, copying and as a basis for derivative works. Works created before 1930 are now in the public domain. Thousands of works spanning all copyright categories make up the Public Domain Class of 2026. Members […]

Here’s What Happened: Cozy Comfort Co. manufactures and sells oversized hooded sweatshirts and blankets. Cozy Comfort has a design patent (see graphic). Cozy Comfort uses “THE COMFY” as a trademark for its products. Top Brand LLC also sells oversized hooded sweatshirts and blankets and uses the trademark “COMFY”. Cozy Comfort accused Top Brand of patent […]

Here’s What Happened: Zunum Aero, Inc. developed aerospace technology for hybrid-electric aircraft and protected aspects of it as trade secrets. Zunum got Boeing Company’s attention. The parties entered into an investment agreement. The investment agreement contained a confidentiality clause. The agreement also restricted Boeing’s use of Zunum trade secrets to only what would be needed […]

Here’s What Happened: Since August 2019, foreign domiciled trademark applicants and registrants must be represented by a qualified US licensed attorney. Qualified means the attorneys are active members in good standing of the highest court in a US state or jurisdiction. The reason for the rule is simple. Individual attorneys who are not licensed to […]

Here’s What Happened:Our blog post of 7/8/2025 covered the Bartz v. Anthropic decision. The court had decided Anthropic’s use of purchased works to train its large language model (LLM) for artificial intelligence was fair use. But, Anthropic’s use of pirated works would not be fair use. The court continued the matter for trial in December […]

Here’s What Happened: We know that courts are grappling with whether training of large language models (LLMs) results in copyright infringement. But what about patents? Recentive Analytics Inc. obtained patents for two types of machine learning models in the entertainment industry. The patents involve a method of scheduling live events and refining “network maps” for […]

Here’s What Happened: Another court has weighed in on whether copyrighted works can be used to train AI. In our last post, we discussed how a court ruled that Anthropic PBC’s use of works it had purchased to train AI was fair use. But use of pirated works was not fair use. Like Antrhopic, Meta […]

Here’s What Happened: Anthropic PBC wanted to create an AI assistant named “Claude” to compete with other chatbots like ChatGPT. Anthropic wanted Claude to be a step above other chatbots by basing its training on well curated facts, well organized analyses and captivating fictional narratives. Like other chatbots, Anthropic had to find works for training […]