Copyright term: The duration of copyright, measured from the date of first publication for works published before 1978, or by the life of the author for unpublished works and works first published after 1977. The current duration of copyright for the work of an individual author is the life of the author, plus 70 years. For corporate works, the current…

The US Copyright Office: Housed within the Library of Congress, the US Copyright Office (USCO) is the United States government body that creates and maintains records of copyright registrations and other transactions, provides deposit copies of registered works to the Library of Congress, provides copyright information to the public, and provides expert advice to Congress, the Judiciary, and federal agencies….

The following note is from our bi-weekly Re:Create Recap click here to subscribe. This week saw the release of the Bipartisan House Task Force Report on Artificial Intelligence, an in-depth exploration of a wide range of policy issues raised by AI technology. The Report’s discussion of intellectual property ably captures the nuances in this complex area and recognizes that, “It…

In a time when local, independent and fact-based news is more critical than ever, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) offers the wrong solution to the challenges facing news reporters and publishers. While action is needed to adequately support local journalism, the JCPA would do more harm than good.  As currently written, the JCPA establishes a new, unconstitutional “access…

The following note is from our bi-weekly Re:Create Recap click here to subscribe. Late last week, as Americans sleepily recovered from our turkey comas, a group of Canadian news media companies pounced, filing a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI on more or less the same theory as their US counterparts: training AI models with in-copyright data should require a license. Canada…

Understanding our nation’s copyright law is important, but also complex. Re:Create’s glossary of key copyright terms is a resource to help promote informed discussions about copyright policy. Scenes-a-faire: Scenes-a-faire are scenes or elements in a genre of copyrighted works that are common, customary, or even obligatory in that genre. For example, the “meet cute” scene is ubiquitous in romantic comedies. In copyright…

A recent opinion dismissing a lawsuit over AI training gets it right on standing: harmless acts don’t belong in federal court. Last week, Judge Colleen McMahon in the Southern District of New York ruled that publishers Raw Story and Alternet lacked Article III standing to sue OpenAI because they had not alleged “concrete harm,” a constitutional requirement interpreted most recently in the Supreme Court’s TransUnion…

Some recent news from Penguin gives me a chance to revisit a question I was asked last week at the Net Caucus Academy briefing on AI and IP: can a publisher change the law by printing magic words on their work?Have you ever actually read the copyright page in a commercially published book – something put out by one of the handful of big…