January, 2023

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More Public Domain “Triumphs”: Winnie the Pooh “Blood and Honey”, and The Great Gatsby (Zombie Version)

Hugh Stephens Blog

Every year around the beginning of January, a lot of public domain hyperbole hits the airwaves with stories about how our lives are about to be enriched now that such-and-such a work is no longer under copyright protection but has fallen into the public domain.

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The Wave of AI Lawsuits Have Begun

Plagiarism Today

The future of AI and copyright is still very uncertain. However, it looks like we may get some answers soon as the lawsuits are pouring in. The post The Wave of AI Lawsuits Have Begun appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

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Copyright Office Pilot Public Records System Mistakenly Reflects Cancellation of Registration for AI Graphic Novel

IP Watchdog

On Monday, January 23, the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) reflected that the registration for a graphic novel that was made using the AI text-to-image tool, Midjourney, had been cancelled. The Office has since clarified that the update was a system error (see above note). The USCO previously registered the work in September 2022.

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What is generative AI?

McKinsey Operations

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) describes algorithms (such as ChatGPT) that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos. Recent new breakthroughs in the field have the potential to drastically change the way we approach content creation.

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Software Composition Analysis: The New Armor for Your Cybersecurity

Speaker: Blackberry, OSS Consultants, & Revenera

Software is complex, which makes threats to the software supply chain more real every day. 64% of organizations have been impacted by a software supply chain attack and 60% of data breaches are due to unpatched software vulnerabilities. In the U.S. alone, cyber losses totaled $10.3 billion in 2022. All of these stats beg the question, “Do you know what’s in your software?

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Sony Patents Anti-Piracy Blacklist for Smart TVs and Media Players

TorrentFreak

Over the past several decades, Sony has established itself as a leading player in the technology, music, film, and gaming industries. The Japanese company hasn’t shied away from taking on the competition, but one adversary has proven particularly difficult to overcome; piracy. Sony recognized this threat early on. At the Americas Conference on Information Systems in 2000, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s U.S. senior vice president Steve Heckler declared an all-out attack on piracy.

Patent 145
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Can Charlie Chaplin’s character “Charlot” be registered as an EU trade mark?

The IPKat

In the era of silent films, Charlie Chaplin did rise to become a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp ( Charlot in several languages). It may therefore come as no surprise that companies, to this day, attempt to monetize in his iconic image. In a decision (only available in French) issued a few days ago, the EUIPO upheld the Office’s objections after having established that the below figurative depiction of Charlot is not eligible for EU trade mark (EUTM) registration: Background

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AI: The Copyright and Plagiarism Story of 2022 and 2023

Plagiarism Today

Typically, when I do these year-end reviews, I cover a wide variety of stories that happened and separate out the copyright and plagiarism. Simply put, copyright and plagiarism are two different things. The former dealing with legal rights a creator has and the latter the ethics of attribution and reuse. Their interests over overlap, but year-to-year the concerns and stories are often very different.

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Darrell Issa Doesn’t Understand That He is the Problem

IP Watchdog

US Inventor is publicly opposing the appointment of Representative Darrell Issa (R – CA) to Chair the IP Subcommittee due to Issa’s record of IP reforms that are harmful to independent inventors and startups. To accomplish these IP reforms, Issa squelches the voices of independent inventors and startups while amplifying the voices of Big Tech and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled multinationals.

Inventor 138
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One billion days lost: How COVID-19 is hurting the US workforce

McKinsey Operations

COVID-19 may no longer be a pandemic, but the disease likely reduced the availability of the US workforce by as much as 2.6 percent in 2022—a burden on productivity that could last for years.

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Pirate Libraries Remain Popular Among Academics, Research Finds

TorrentFreak

By offering free access to millions of ‘paywalled’ research papers, Sci-Hub is often described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”. The site is used by researchers from all over the world, to acquire papers they otherwise have a hard time accessing. For some, Sci-Hub is essential for their work. Major academic publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, view this rogue research library as a direct threat to their business model.

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IPO Diversity in Innovation Toolkit

Women and diverse employees have the technical skill and knowledge, yet their contributions are not patented at the same rate as those of their male counterparts.This toolkit can help organizations move the needle on achieving gender parity in innovation.

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Parody under copyright and trade mark law: key guidance from Zorro. and the Italian Supreme Court

The IPKat

Zorro in the Brio Blu ad Last week, the Italian Supreme Court issued an important – if not truly seminal – judgment on the interplay between IP and freedom of expression ( decision 38165/2022, CO.GE.DI. International – Compagnia Generale Distribuzione s.p.a. v Zorro Productions Inc. ). In delivering its new judgment in the long-running (15+ years and counting!

Copyright 138
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The Most Significant Copyright Issues Likely to Arise in 2023

Copyright Alliance

During the first few weeks of 2023, we took a look back at 2022 by summarizing the most important copyright-related court cases, U.S. Copyright Office activities, and legislation that commanded […] The post The Most Significant Copyright Issues Likely to Arise in 2023 appeared first on Copyright Alliance.

Copyright 136
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CNET’s AI Plagiarism Debacle

Plagiarism Today

CNET was recently called out for using an AI reporter for dozens of its stories. Then it went from bad to worse with mistakes and plagiarism. The post CNET’s AI Plagiarism Debacle appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

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Bill to decriminalise IP offences misses the mark and dilutes significant provisions

SpicyIP

The Parliament is considering a bill that decriminalises offences across 42 statutes. Intellectual property rights statutes i.e. the Copyright Act, 1957, the Patents Act, 1970, the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Geographical Indications Act, 1999 are among the laws that are proposed to be amended. The objective of this bill is to increase the ‘Ease of Living and Doing Business in India’.

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One billion days lost: How COVID-19 is hurting the US workforce

McKinsey Operations

COVID-19 may no longer be a pandemic, but the disease likely reduced the availability of the US workforce by as much as 2.6 percent in 2022—a burden on productivity that could last for years.

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Illegal Streaming Detector Cars Can’t Track Firesticks Wrapped in Tin Foil

TorrentFreak

Early January, anti-piracy group FACT and West Mercia Police announced they would be visiting addresses in the UK to warn people away from pirate IPTV services. Police had obtained a customer list from a service they raided last year and, since many people hand over their real details to pirate services, tracking down some subscribers would’ve been trivial.

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What principles should guide African governments in realising the right to research in Africa?

The IPKat

In The right to research , Appadurai made the argument to “recognise that research is a specialised name for a generalised capacity, the capacity to make disciplined inquiries into those things we need to know, but do not know yet”. Since then, various scholars have aligned with the same or similar perspective of conceptualising research as an activity that goes beyond what one does or is able to do to what one has the qualities required to undertake.

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Champagne’s Choice

Michael Geist

The Rogers-Shaw merger saga was always destined to end on the desk of Innovation, Science and Industry Ministry François-Philippe Champagne. The merger has followed a familiar pattern: the companies started with a plan to merge without any divestitures that never stood a serious chance of approval, followed by adopting the Bell-MTS playbook of divesting assets to the weakest possible competitor in Xplorenet.

Marketing 131
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Opinion: Restoring The Road Less Traveled – American Invention at a Crossroad

IP Watchdog

As Robert Frost poetically noted, two roads diverged in the woods he was exploring. One road was well trod, easy to traverse, and the other less traveled, difficult and getting weedy. Sadly, although Americans pride themselves on innovation, American innovation, particularly inventorship, is now the difficult road. Bad decisions made in previous forks in the road have gradually undermined the innovative spirit in our nation, but some inventors in Washington, DC, next week want to change course b

Invention 128
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Indian government denies access to Covid 19 vaccine collaboration agreements

SpicyIP

The Indian government has refused to disclose its collaboration agreements and investments made in developing and procuring India’s Covid 19 vaccine – Covaxin, the Indian mRNA and intranasal vaccine candidates. Despite widespread public interest in these arrangements, the government has consistently rejected Right to Information (RTI) applications requesting this information.

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The metaverse: Driving value in the mobility sector

McKinsey Operations

Although a fully immersive, interconnected metaverse remains years away, mobility stakeholders can already capture real business value from the technologies designed to enable it.

Designs 141
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Four Genshin Impact Leakers Targeted in New Set of DMCA Subpoenas

TorrentFreak

With tens of millions of fans playing every month, Genshin Impact is a huge free-to-play gaming success story. While Genshin Impact publisher Cognosphere undoubtedly enjoys this global attention, some groups of fans are taking their enthusiasm a little too far. As revealed by TorrentFreak last December, Cognosphere is targeting gamers who leak Genshin Impact content to the public in advance of the company’s schedule.

Copyright 137
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Confidentiality restrictions around clinical trials and prior public use (T 0670/20)

The IPKat

The recent Board of Appeal decision in T 0670/20 considered whether patients in a clinical trial were under conditions of confidentiality. The patent was for a tablet formulation that had been given to patients in a clinical trial conducted before the patent had been filed. The question became whether the patients could be considered members of the public, and whether their participation in the clinical trial therefore constituted prior public use of the formulation.

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An Update on AI Inventorship and Authorship Cases

Patently-O

by Dennis Crouch In 2022, the Federal Circuit held that an invention is only eligible for a US patent if a human conceived of the invention. Thus, no patents for invention wholly conceived by artificial intelligence. Thaler v. Vidal , 43 F.4th 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2022). Thaler’s petition for writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court would have been due last week, but Thaler was able to obtain an extension with the petition now being due March 19, 2023.

Invention 126
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USPTO-FDA Listening Session: Patient Advocates Want Access, Patent Advocates Want Evidence

IP Watchdog

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today jointly held an all-day listening session featuring speakers from patient advocacy and industry groups, academia, and brand and generic pharmaceutical companies who weighed in on the relationship between patents and affordable access to medicines. The session was announced via a Federal Register Notice and request for comments on the subject, published on November 7, 2022, stemming from a joint July 202

Patent 128
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Future of mRNA and win-win for all: Why we need the government to disclose its collaboration agreement

SpicyIP

It is critic al for the government to be forward-thinking. The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistan ce Council, a government department, is reported to have provided INR 70 to 100 crores to Gennova Pharmaceuticals for its development of an mRNA vaccine for Covid. The mRNA technology is a versatile platform technology that has been heralded as a new era in vaccines.

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From tailwinds to crosscurrents: Resilient growth in wealth management

McKinsey Operations

A decade of favorable macroeconomic conditions and relatively easy growth has ended, signaling a new urgency for US wealth managers to rethink operating models and reenergize growth.

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Popular TV Streaming Service USTVGO Shuts Down

TorrentFreak

With millions of monthly users, USTVGO was one of the most visited live TV streaming portals on the Internet. As its name suggests, the portal focused on US channels, making it a popular site for cord-cutting Americans or those living abroad. A few days ago, USTVGO users were presented with a disappointing message. Out of the blue, the site’s clean homepage, which usually carries links to over a hundred channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Nickelodeon, was replaced with just four words; S

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Geographical Indications and the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919: Then and Now

The IPKat

This Kat has recently been researching the impact of wars on geographical indications (GIs). She would like to share with Kat readers some thoughts on how features of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 and its aftermath resonate with the modern-day GI legislation. Background The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed on June 28, 1919. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied (US, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan) and the Associated Powers (a total of 22 of countr

Art 130
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If You Ask Your Friend to Take Your Photo Using Your Camera, Who Owns the Copyright?–Shah v. NYP

Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Vivek Shah attended several Hollywood parties. While there, he preset the settings on his phone camera (including shutter speed, white balance, ISO, metering type, and exposure value) and asked friends or bystanders to use his phone to take photos of him with celebrities. He posted the photos to Facebook and his IMDB page ( this one? ). In 2012, the FBI arrested Shah for extortion, which sparked news coverage.

Copyright 124
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Thaler Files Motion for Summary Judgment in Latest Bid to Argue AI-Authored Works Should Be Copyrightable

IP Watchdog

Last week, artificial intelligence (AI) systems developer Dr. Stephen Thaler filed a motion for summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a lawsuit over copyright eligibility for artwork created by AI systems. Thaler’s motion for summary judgment argues that AI-generated works are copyrightable under U.S. federal law and that the copyright should vest in Thaler under common law property principles and the work made for hire doctrine.

Copyright 127
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[Video] Data Governance for the BYOD Age

JD Supra Law

A significant portion of the workforce has adapted to working in today’s modern “office”— which includes working from a variety of locations (homes, corporate offices, coffee shops, airports, etc.) on any number of personal devices, including mobile phones, laptops, and tablets. But, have corporate information governance programs kept pace with this revolution?

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Artificial intelligence in strategy

McKinsey Operations

AI tools can help executives avoid biases in decisions, pull insights out of oceans of data, and make strategic choices more quickly. And that’s just the beginning.

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Prominent Pirate Sites Mysteriously Vanish from Bing’s Search Results

TorrentFreak

Over the past several months, we have repeatedly reported on Google’s decision to voluntarily remove pirate sites from its search results. Google will do so if local court orders require ISPs to block access to the sites. These measures are geo-targeted at the applicable countries, which include the UK, France, and the Netherlands. Thus far Google hasn’t publicly commented on its motivation but several rightsholders have confirmed the actions.

Privacy 134
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Book Review: Intellectual Property Objectives in International Investment Agreements

The IPKat

This Kat is happy to share with our readers her review of “ Intellectual Property Objectives in International Investment Agreements ”, authored by Pratyush Nath Upreti (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022, 284 pp.). The book addresses a pressing issue at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and investment law: how shall IP rights be treated in investor-state dispute settlement?