HKPC Lunch & Learn Talk - The Challenges of Generative AI in Intellectual Property Protection

 I attended the HKPC Lunch & Learn Talk named “The Challenges of Generative AI in Intellectual Property Protection” (探討生成式AI在知識產權保護方面的挑戰). Dr. Albert So is the guest speaker and we had joined ANQ Congress together in last year.

Firstly, he briefed the background of IP protection ordinance in Hong Kong. IP included three areas and they were Copyright, Trademark and Patent.  Nature of Copyright included any article, music and art that no need for registration and effective once created.

Then Dr. Albert So stated the ownership of copyright that author is the first owner. If author is employed by company to create the items, employer had the copyright in default. For commissioned work, the contractor is the owner if not stated clearly in the contract agreement.

Restricted act by copyright included copy, distribution in public, open performance, broadcasting, etc. However, some statutory permitted acts had been allowed such as action not affected owner’s benefit and some special purposes (e.g. education, comments & research).

After that Dr. So briefed some legal IP aspects on Generative AI. Who would be responsible to the infringement that included AI Model Developer, AI Model User, Platform Service Provider and End User.

Finally, some cases were discussed. The first case was “Monkey-selfie copyright dispute”. Between 2011 and 2018, a series of disputes took place about the copyright status of selfies taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to the British wildlife photographer David J. Slater. In December 2014, the United States Copyright Office stated that works created by a non-human, such as a photograph taken by a monkey, are not copyrightable. In April 2018, the appeals court ruled that animals cannot legally hold copyrights. Non-human is key words that included AI!

The second case was Edmond de Belamy that is a generative adversarial network (GAN) portrait painting constructed in 2018 by Paris-based arts-collective “Obvious”. In this case, Obvious received USD $432,500. Dr. Albert So mentioned that it could be employed the Doctrine of “Authorship Transfer” that person behind the AI who had control over the creative process if no infringement. Since the teaching draw were long time ago, it is not covered by copyright (more than 50 year after author pass away).

The last case was that a user requested Ultraman-related images from the AI platform, which was not named in reporting, the outputs were extremely similar to the plaintiff’s original creation. The Guangzhou Internet Court ruled that an AI company infringed on the plaintiff's "copyright and adaptation rights" to the Ultraman works while providing generative AI services, ordering the defendant to pay 10,000 yuan (about USD$1,389) in compensation to the plaintiff for the economic loss.

At the end, Dr. Albert So concluded that AI generative texts or diagrams may infringe copyright. So we needed to consider the context owner and country related ordinances, as well as, AI derives product.

Reference

20231019: ANQ Congress 2023, in Phy My, Ba Ria Vung Tau, Vietnam – Day 2 (Part A – Parallel Session) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2023/10/anq-congress-2023-in-phy-my-ba-ria-vung_19.html

20231005: Lunch with Prof. Philip Chan for ANQ Congress 2023 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2023/10/lunch-with-prof-philip-chan-for-anq.html