Remember that AI artwork that won first prize at a Colorado State Fair art competition, sparking a debate around AI usage that went viral? According to the U.S. Copyright Office, the work cannot be copyrighted, at least not without disclaiming those portions made through the use of AI.

Here’s a roundup of legal issues at the intersection of art, intellectual property, and technology.

What happens when a copyright application contains a mistake? Will that mistake invalidate a copyright registration? Fortunately, the Copyright Act contains a safe-harbor provision protecting registrations from invalidation based on innocent errors. In this blog post, we discuss the safe-harbor provision and a recent case interpreting that statute.

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Copyright Office published a Notice of Inquiry in the Federal Register announcing that they are conducting a joint study regarding issues of intellectual property law and policy associated with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The newly-established Copyright Claims Board (the “CCB”) will begin accepting claims on June 16, 2022, according to the Copyright Office. The CCB arose out of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (or the “CASE Act”), which Congress passed in 2020. It is the first-ever copyright small claims forum, intended to provide an accessible and efficient alternative for resolving copyright disputes involving claims up to $30,000.

When is a copyright infringement case ripe for dismissal at the outset because the secondary work clearly made fair use of the first-in-time work? And, if a court grants the defendant’s motion to dismiss, should the judge then award the defendant its attorneys’ fees in defending the case? These issues were explored in a recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision – Yang. v. Mic Network Inc. Here’s what you need to know.

The Supreme Court will hear the closely-watched dispute over whether the Warhol Foundation made fair use of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph of Prince.

Barbara Kruger, Robert Storr, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, and others recently filed amici curiae (“friends of the court”) briefs, urging the Supreme Court to grant The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ petition for a writ of certiorari, arguing that the nation’s highest court should reconsider the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision against the Foundation in a well-publicized copyright case. We discuss these amici briefs here.

The U.S. copyright law has a pre-litigation procedure allowing copyright holders to identify alleged infringers through unmasking subpoenas. In this blog post, we discuss the law surrounding these subpoenas and a recent case in which anonymous bloggers tried in vain to quash an unmasking subpoena.  This subpoena procedure is of relevance to creatives policing infringement, and to those wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights anonymously.

Earlier this week, Miramax sued Quentin Tarantino over the filmmaker’s plans to drop NFTs associated with Pulp Fiction.  Here’s what you need to know.

Artist Samuel Kerson cannot prohibit Vermont Law School under the Visual Artists Rights Act from concealing murals he painted on the school campus, per a court order issued last week.

What is an artist or a museum to do when they discover that their artwork has been used in a porn film without their knowledge or approval (and they think that’s a bad thing)? Two recent legal spats raise this question. Here’s what you need to know.

In this blog post, we cover the Second Circuit's August 2021 amended opinion in the fair use case involving the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and photographer Lynn Goldsmith.

Continuing on the NFT sales run, auction houses recently have announced the sale of NFTs that come with rights to 3-D print designs, use the artwork as a profile pic, and grant access to an online community of collectors. We discuss these sales below .

Recently, Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc. (“RAF”), which owns the rights to Jay-Z’s debut album Reasonable Doubt, sued one of the company’s three owners, Damon Dash, to block an NFT (non-fungible token) sale of the copyright to the album. RAF claims that, because it owns the copyright in the album, Dash has no right to sell it on his own. Shortly after filing suit, RAF obtained a court order temporarily barring Dash from selling any rights in the album. The case is a reminder that: (a) a rightsholder can block an improper NFT sale, and (b) minters and sales platforms should precisely identify the assets conveyed by any NFT.

Recently, visual artists have minted non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of their artwork and offered the NFTs for sale in curated online exhibitions. What copyright interest, if any, is the artist selling to the NFT buyer? What is in the contract between the auction house and the artist? Below we discuss some copyright considerations in connection with such NFT sales.

Recently, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court ruling that the Metropolitan Museum of Art did not infringe a photographer’s copyright in an image of Eddie Van Halen because the museum’s use of the image in its online exhibition catalogue constituted fair use.  This decision is relevant to all galleries and museums that exhibit artworks digitally, which has only increased since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Here’s what you need to know.

Recently, a federal appeals court in New York held that artwork by Andy Warhol, a leading figure of the Pop Art movement, is not “transformative” and that the artist’s foundation committed copyright infringement when it licensed the reproduction of one of his works. Does the decision represent a shift in the copyright law? Here’s what you need to know.