A Market for Training Data and No Intermediate Copying Defense: How the Reuters v Ross Summary Judgment Could Affect Generative AI Copyright Lawsuits

ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout offers his perspective on how the Ross Vs. Reuters decision could impact generative AI copyright lawsuits in Capitol Forum. Read full story here.

The recent summary judgment ruling in the first-ever AI training data copyright lawsuit may give  courts some guidance on how to consider generative AI copyright cases. If so, that’s good news for  copyright holders. 

Kristian Stout, director of innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, said  this also indicates that courts may not buy the argument that AI models are solely training on  uncopyrightable aspects, rather than the expressive content of works that copyright is meant to  protect. 

“The way the court is reading Warhol is very similar to how I read the Texaco casethat is, the  large language models are using the content for the expressive content itself,” Stout said. Reuters “is not binding precedent, but it will be influential for other cases looking at the training data  issues.”