Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Jennifer Rothman, ‘Reframing Deepfakes’
ABSTRACT The circulation of deceptive fakes of real people appearing to say and do things that they never did has been made ever easier and more convincing by improved and still improving technology, including (but not limited to) uses of generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’). In this essay, adapted from a lecture given at Columbia Law […]
Paul Chidubem Okechukwu, ‘The Impact of Copyright Law on Music Sampling in the Digital Age’
ABSTRACT This paper critically examines how music sampling is controlled within the current regime of copyright law, with particular reference to the digital age. It examines how the law is mediating the interest of copyright holders and the facts of music-making in the contemporary age, and whether the law promotes or stifles creative expression. Drawing […]
Call for Paper Proposals: ‘Intellectual Property and Politics: From Power Relations to Realpolitik’, São Paulo, 28 June – 1 July 2026
The thematic focus of the Congress is the interface between IP and politics. We ask whether, how, and to what extent politics influences IP law, and how IP law, in turn, functions as a political tool in various contexts. The elusiveness of the concept of politics merits in-depth analysis to illuminate the many ways it […]
Pasquale, Malone and Ting, ‘Copyright, Learnright, and Fair Use: Rethinking Compensation for AI Model Training’
ABSTRACT Generative AI can rapidly output vast amounts of expressive content, some of which has great value for society. This new computational process also raises a deep question of fairness: Will the original creators of the content used to train these systems share in the value they create? The question becomes particularly urgent as the […]
Buccafusco, Masur and Whalen, ‘Measuring the Value of Trademark Distinctiveness: Evidence from the Market for Bordeaux Wines’
ABSTRACT The market value of distinctive trademarks is a fundamental assumption of both trademark law and marketing theory. However, there is little empirical evidence underlying this assumption. We examine the relationship between brand dissimilarity and market prices in the context of the Bordeaux wine market. Using a unique dataset covering thousands of wines and their […]
Amudat Bello, ‘Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on Climate Actions in Africa: The Way Forward’
ABSTRACT Considering the growing need to strike a balance between the intellectual property (IP) system and technology transfer, it is critical to examine the main impediment to the optimisation of low-carbon potentials in Africa and how this can be addressed. Against this background, this paper will assess the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and […]
Aline Larroyed, ‘The Fallacy of the File: How the Memorisation Metaphor Misguides Copyright Law and Stifles AI Innovation’
ABSTRACT This article examines the metaphor of ‘memorisation’ in current debates about artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), and its migration into copyright law. In machine learning, memorisation has a narrow technical meaning, describing rare instances where models reproduce verbatim fragments of training data. Yet, when transposed into legal discourse, the term has […]
Rademeyer and Selvadurai, ‘Out from the shadows: developing effective copyright laws for AI training datasets and shadow libraries’
INTRODUCTION Shadow libraries are vast online repositories containing millions of pirated books and articles made free to download on websites. The sharing of copyrighted work outside ‘official channels’ has been identified as a longstanding practice, with scholars such as Bodó tracing the historic roots of key shadow libraries such as Library Genesis (‘LibGen’) and Sci-Hub […]
Jorge Contreras, ‘Silly Patents, Serious Issues’
ABSTRACT A wooden stick. A crustless sandwich. The comb-over. These commonplaces of everyday life share one remarkable feature: each was once protected by a United States patent. Patents like these – so-called ‘silly’ patents – are humorous because they present a manifest incongruity between common knowledge and the statutory patentability requirements of novelty and nonobviousness. […]
Kalyvaki, Nash and McIntosh, ‘AI, copyright, and business: navigating global legal challenges in the era of generative content and digital replicas’
ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing content creation, raising significant questions about copyright, authorship, and intellectual property. The integration of AI into creative industries brings both opportunities and risks, as companies need to balance innovation with legal compliance. The advent of technologies like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney has sparked legal debates over the ownership […]