NIPC Law

Jane Lambert   Chancery Division (Mrs Justice Joanna Smith) Getty Images (US) Inc and others v Stability AI Ltd (Rev1) [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch) (4 Nov 2025) I first mentioned this litigation in Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - Getty Images (US) Inc and others v Stability AI Ltd . on 12 Dec 2023. In that article, I discussed an unsuccessful application by Stability AI Ltd ("Stability") to strike out the claim by Getty Images (US) Inc. and others ("Getty") for copyright, database right and trade mark infringement and passing off under  CPR Part 24 and CPR 3.4  in  Getty Images (US) Inc and others v Stability AI Lt d [2023] EWHC 3090 (Ch) (1 Dec 2023).   Getty had alleged that Stability had scraped millions of high-quality photographic images of such subjects as world events, sporting moments, celebrities, architecture, nature and travel created by hundreds of thousands of photographers over many years and in which copyright was likely to subsis...

Vinyl Record Author Evan-Amos Licence Dedicated to the public by the author Source Phonograph Record Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Hacon)   FBT Productions, LLC v Let Them Eat Vinyl Distribution Ltd and another [2019] EWHC 829 (IPEC) This was a claim for infringement of copyright  in the sound recording of an album called Infinite by Marshall Bruce Mathers III who is better known as Eminem . The claimant, a Detroit record company, alleged that the first defendant had made vinyl copies of Infinite which it supplied to the second defendant for resale to the public. Neither defendant denied those acts but they challenged the claimant's claim to copyright and the second defendant denied that it knew or had reason to believe that the items that it sold were infringing copies. The Issues The action came on for trial before His Honour Judge Hacon.  At paragraph [5] of his judgment, he identified three issues in dis...

The  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988  ( "CDPA" ) proscribes 8 separate acts of secondary infringement: importing infringing copies possessing or dealing with such copies providing means for making such copies transmitting a copyright work over a telecommunications system permitting premises to be used for an infringing performance providing apparatus for such infringement permitting such apparatus to be brought onto premises, and supplying a sound recording or film for an infringing performance. An essential ingredient of all those acts is some actual or imputed knowledge primary infringement  of copyright. Importing Infringing Copies S.22 of the CDPA provides that copyright is infringed by importing into the United Kingdom otherwise than for private and domestic use an article in the knowledge or with reason to believe that it is an infringing copy of a copyright work. An "infringing copy" is defined by s.27 (2) as an article whose making constituted an inf...