Intellectual Property
June 15, 2025
On March 25, 2025, U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee for the Northern District of California rejected a preliminary injunction put forth by Universal Music Group (UMG) and other music publishers to prevent Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, from using their copyrighted song lyrics to train its AI-powered chatbot, Claude. Essentially, a preliminary injunction is a type of court order granted before or during a lawsuit. The main purpose of a preliminary injunction is to stop the actions of one party from further taking actions that could harm the other party before a lawsuit or while it's ongoing. As such, the preliminary injunction request by the music publishers aimed at stopping Anthropic from further using the music publishers' copyrighted song lyrics to train Claude before a court decision is made.
June 15, 2025
At the forefront of world changing events, AI has brought in a new era of not only daily living and technology, but also legal conversations. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence softwares, such as ChatGPT by OpenAi or Gemini by Google, has caused questions to arise, such as who owns the rights to AI produced works? Is the data being inputted into these models being gathered, used, and stored ethically? Who's rights might be infringed on when using AI? In this article, we will use a viral example that took the internet by storm: Barbie themed AI.
May 15, 2025
In February 2025, Pepperdine University filed a lawsuit against entertainment giants Netflix and Warner Bros. over Trademark Infringement, using a trademark without permission, within a new Netflix series called Running Point. The issue arises when a basketball team within the show known as the "Waves" had the same colors as Pepperdine's Logo, to which the University claims could confuse and harm its brand. The show also has elements that go against the University's Christian values, such as inappropriate jokes and sexual references.
April 15, 2025
On February 3, 2022, Nike (Plaintiff) filed a complaint against StockX (Defendant) for unauthorized and infringing use of Nike's famous marks in connection with StockX's entry into the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market. NFTs are blockchain-based virtual products for collecting, selling, and trading, offering brands unique ways to engage consumers. Nike claimed these NFTs, which featured images of Nike-branded sneakers, infringe on its trademarks and cause consumer confusion. In March 2023, StockX contended that its NFT offerings for tracking physical goods ownership do not infringe Nike's trademark rights.
March 15, 2025
Lerner & Rowe was founded in 2005 and is the largest of the two firms, with nineteen offices throughout the state. It has spent $100 million promoting its brand and trademarks in Arizona and owns the trademark for its name. A trademark is a sign that differentiates the goods or services of one business from those of others and is protected by intellectual property rights. The firm sued defendant Brown, Engstrand & Shely, LLC, which is also known as The Accident Law Group (ALG) since they specialize in personal injury law.
January 15, 2025
The Big Three record labels-Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group, filed a lawsuit against AI music platforms Suno and Udio, alleging copyright infringement. In the mid-2024 case, the Big Three alleged that the platforms had used thousands of copyrighted songs without permission to train AI models to be capable of generating music from text prompts. The record labels that own the copyrighted music argue that this use of its copyrighted works is illegal and uncompensated. They are seeking damages worth as much as $150,000 per infringed work, totaling in billions of dollars in compensation.