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Generative AI and Intellectual Property Rights

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Law and Artificial Intelligence

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Law Series ((ITLS,volume 35))

Abstract

Since the inception of AI, researchers have tried to generate novel works in media ranging from music through text to images. The quality of works produced by generative AI-systems is starting to reach levels that make them usable in contexts where until now human creations are employed. In addition, new contexts are emerging in which humans unskilled in a creative domain can generate works by cooperating with generative AI-tools. Generative AI could lead to an abundance of individually customized content, where works are generated for a particular user in a specific situation and presented once, perhaps never to be repeated again. These developments challenge core concepts of Intellectual Property Rights: “authorship” obviously, but also “work”. Although the content produced by generative systems is new, these systems are often trained on a corpus of (parts of) existing works produced by humans. Hence, practices of (un)authorised imitation need to be considered. In this chapter we want to study these questions, which are emerging in all creative domains, with generative AI for music as the central example.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Most notably Autoencoders and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs).

  2. 2.

    Boulanger-Lewandowski et al. 2012.

  3. 3.

    Gregor et al. 2015.

  4. 4.

    Elgammal 2017.

  5. 5.

    Liu et al. 2017.

  6. 6.

    Yu et al. 2016.

  7. 7.

    Karsdorp et al. 2018.

  8. 8.

    The first experiments in this field date back to the 1950s, see Hiller and Isaacson 1958.

  9. 9.

    Hanbury M (2019) A billionaire venture capitalist thinks music as we know it will be dead in 10 years, https://www.businessinsider.nl/venture-capitalist-vinod-khosla-talks-future-of-music-2019-6/?international=true&r=US, accessed 10 June 2021.

  10. 10.

    Last December, Allan et al. 2020 was published, an EU commission study containing a legal assessment of these matters with literature overview and case law.

  11. 11.

    Execution is often ‘primed’ with random numbers or incoming data from outside the system, examples of which will be discussed in Sect. 17.5.1.

  12. 12.

    For instance, David Cope's Experiments in Musical Intelligence software, which was able to write pieces in the style of several composers.

  13. 13.

    See Briot et al. 2019 for a systematic overview of generative machine learning methods for music.

  14. 14.

    It is important to point out is that the compositions from the dataset are not present in the model. During training they are processed to change the weights internal to the model, but the compositions are not stored in or retained by the system. Once trained, it generates new compositions without consulting the dataset.

  15. 15.

    Carr and Zukowski 2018.

  16. 16.

    Dieleman et al. 2016.

  17. 17.

    https://www.musi-co.com/listen/track/walk-in-the-park, accessed 10 June 2021.

  18. 18.

    Angioloni et al. 2020.

  19. 19.

    Published as `ASF-4', additional material to the paper, https://paolo-f.github.io/CONLON/datasets.html, accessed 10 June 2021.

  20. 20.

    Mixing is in itself a domain of important creative choices in music production, but in this case the objective was to present the composition generated by the deep learning model as faithfully as possible.

  21. 21.

    Musi-co Live AI, https://www.musi-co.com/listen/live, accessed 10 June 2021.

  22. 22.

    Allan et al. 2020, pp. 79–80.

  23. 23.

    DIRECTIVE 2009/24/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs, Official Journal of the European Communities, No L111/16.

    https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32009L0024&from=EN

  24. 24.

    DIRECTIVE 96191EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 11 March 1996, on the legal protection of databases, Official Journal of the European Communities, No L77/20 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:31996L0009&from=EN

  25. 25.

    Case C-145/10 Eva-Maria Painer v Standard Verlag GmbH and others, Luxembourg, 1 December 2011.

  26. 26.

    U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of U.S. copyright office practices (3d ed. 2014), §306. p. 8. “To qualify as a work of ‘authorship’ a work must be created by a human being.... Works that do not satisfy this requirement are not copyrightable. The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants.”

  27. 27.

    The fight between the photographer and animal rights activists is well described in Guadamuz 2018.

  28. 28.

    Naruto v. Slater, no. 16-15469 (9th Cir. 25 May 2018) concluded the case.

  29. 29.

    DIRECTIVE 2001/29/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32001L0029&from=EN.

  30. 30.

    Levola Hengelo v Smilde Foods (Case C-310/17; 13 November 2018).

  31. 31.

    Case C-145/10.

  32. 32.

    See for instance the discussion of Artificial Moral Agents in Müller 2020, Section 2.9.

  33. 33.

    Supra note 14.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 22.

  35. 35.

    Hristov 2017, p. 436.

  36. 36.

    Abbreviation of “quasi-work”, pronounced “quirk”.

  37. 37.

    Hristov 2017, pp. 436–437.

  38. 38.

    Rognstad 2018.

  39. 39.

    De Cock Buning 2018, pp. 511–535.

  40. 40.

    European Economic and Social Committee 2017, para 1.12.

  41. 41.

    EU Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs 2015, Section 59(f).

  42. 42.

    Gunkel 2018.

  43. 43.

    UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 12(7).

  44. 44.

    Ibid., Section 178.

  45. 45.

    Section 2(1) of the Irish Copyright and related Rights Act 2000.

  46. 46.

    Lambert 2017.

  47. 47.

    Clark and Smyth 1997, p. 252.

  48. 48.

    For an analysis of different possible configurations of co-authorship of these parties, see Maunder-Cockram 2019, chapter 4.

  49. 49.

    The Vessel Hull Design Protection Act, published as chapter 13 of Title 17 of the United States Code, was signed into law on 28 October 1998.

  50. 50.

    The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act (SCPA) of 1984 established a new type of intellectual property protection for mask works that are fixed in semiconductor chips. It did so by amending title 17 of the United States Code, adding chapter 9.1.

  51. 51.

    Directive 96/9/EC (n48) art 4(1).

  52. 52.

    Noto La Diega 2019.

  53. 53.

    Hubert 2020, Section 7.3.

  54. 54.

    Ihalainen 2018.

  55. 55.

    Hubert 2020, p. 65.

  56. 56.

    Allan et al. 2020, p. 88.

  57. 57.

    Examples of related rights that might qualify for the so-called related (neighbouring rights) protection are: rights of performing artists, phonogram producers, broadcasting organisations and film producers, as of 7 June 2021 press publishers were added as falling under the Rental and Lending Rights Directive. Directive 2006/115/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property (codified version).

  58. 58.

    See for an extensive analysis of the usage of samples Bernd Justin Jütte & Giulia Priora, The end of a legal franchise—The German BGH concludes the sampling saga in Metall auf Metall IV, http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2020/08/05/the-end-of-a-legal-franchise-the-german-bgh-concludes-the-sampling-saga-in-metall-auf-metall-iv/.

  59. 59.

    Article 2 Copyright Directive and article 9(1)(b) Rental Right and Lending Right Directive: ECJ 29 July 2019, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-476/17"C-476/17, ECLI:EU:C:2019:624, Pelham c.s.\ Hütter c.s. (Metall auf Metall).

  60. 60.

    See the website of the French competition authority for an in-detail basing of the fine: https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de-presse/remuneration-des-droits-voisins-lautorite-sanctionne-google-hauteur-de-500.

  61. 61.

    https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000038826736.

  62. 62.

    DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/790 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC.

  63. 63.

    See for instance Lee et al. 2019.

  64. 64.

    Wang 2019.

  65. 65.

    Kop 2020, Section VI.

  66. 66.

    Allan et al. 2020, p. 152.

  67. 67.

    See for an account and its legal consequences of the extension as implemented through the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (CTEA) in het US https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-worth-of-works-just-fell-into-the-public-domain/commonly referred to as the Mickey Mouse Extension. In Europe almost the same happened, not due to Disney but to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (concerning the song “I wanna be your man” written by Lennon/McCartney and performed by The Rolling Stones), see Bernt Hugenholtz, O No, Not Again: Term Extension, 6 April 2011 http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2011/04/06/o-no-not-again-term-extension/.

  68. 68.

    Carlisle 2019.

  69. 69.

    Kop 2020, Section VII.

  70. 70.

    McLeod and DiCola 2011, chapter 5.

  71. 71.

    Performance, recording, mixing, mastering, in all of which AI is increasingly applied as well.

  72. 72.

    Smith 2021, p. 71.

  73. 73.

    Riehl 2020.

  74. 74.

    DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/790 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32019L0790&from=EN.

  75. 75.

    See supra Sect. 17.4.6 the fine Google was given in France.

  76. 76.

    See supra note 75, Article 17.4.

  77. 77.

    Barrett 2019, p. 49.

  78. 78.

    At that time centred around the precursor Article 13.

  79. 79.

    Alexander J (2018) ‘Internet is under threat’: what you need to know about the EU’s copyright directive, https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/11/17843664/copyright-directive-europian-union-parliament-explained-internet-article-13-youtube-fair-use, accessed 10 June 2021.

  80. 80.

    Thomas D (2021) Is This Beverly Hills Cop Playing Sublime’s ‘Santeria’ to Avoid Being Live-Streamed?, https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxb94/is-this-beverly-hills-cop-playing-sublimes-santeria-to-avoid-being-livestreamed, accessed 10 June 2021.

  81. 81.

    Kop 2020, Section VIII.

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  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Jan Smits & Tijn Borghuis

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  1. Jan Smits
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    Bart Custers

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    Eduard Fosch-Villaronga

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Smits, J., Borghuis, T. (2022). Generative AI and Intellectual Property Rights. In: Custers, B., Fosch-Villaronga, E. (eds) Law and Artificial Intelligence. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 35. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-523-2_17

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