Law Commons^™

Tools Do Not Create: Human Authorship In The Use Of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Michael D. Murray

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

Artistic tools, from brushes to complex algorithms, don’t create art; human artists do. The advent of generative AI tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion has blurred this understanding, causing observers to believe these tools are the authors of the artworks they produce, even so far as to imagine that the artworks are “created” by the AI in the copyright sense of the word. Not so.

The U.S. Copyright Office recently issued guidance on the copyrightability of works produced using generative AI tools. The Office has accepted the narrative that AI tools perform the steps of authorship, conceiving of the …

An Initial Examination Of Computer Programs As Creative Works, Trina C. Kershaw, Ralph D. Clifford, Firas Khatib, Adnan El-Nasan

Faculty Publications

Products from many domains (art, music, engineering design, literature, etc.) are considered to be creative works, but there is a misconception that computer programs are limited by set expressions and thus have no room for creativity. To determine whether computer programs are creative works, we collected programs from 23 advanced graduate students that were written to solve simple and complex bioinformatics problems. These programs were assessed for their variability of expression using a new measurement that we designed. They were also evaluated on several elements of their creativity using a version of Cropley and Kaufman’s (2012) Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale …

Channel Your Inner Kindergartner: Fostering A Culture Conducive To Creativity In Legal Practice, Samantha A. Moppett

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Teasing The Arc Of Electric Spark: Fostering And Teaching Creativity In The Law School Curriculum, Jason G. Dykstra

Articles

No abstract provided.

"You Got Too Much Dip On Your Chip!" How Stagnant Copyright Law Is Stifling Creativity, Taylor Bussey

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Over time, our concept of what qualifies as an author has changed–specifically with the dominance of the internet. Tangentially, our idea of what it means to be a joint author has changed. What once would have required physical proximity now can be accomplished via the internet in a matter of seconds. Authors from all around the globe can collaborate. Geographic limitations present virtually no constraint on the number of individuals that can contribute to a work. Human creativity, however, has remained the same. When creating, authors naturally draw on their human experience. Without tailoring modern copyright law to modern trends …

Law Library Blog (April 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Creativity In Language: Reflections On Polysemy, Metaphors, Idioms, Collocations…And The Like, Adel Sakakini, Diana Hadi

BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior

According to Ronald Carter (2011), Creativity is such a complex and protean term to define. It involves inventiveness, imagination, novelty, originality and a myriad of other aspects. In language, in particular, creativity manifests itself in humans’ ability to produce an infinite number of sentences never spoken before and understand sentences never heard before or what Chomsky calls “creative aspect” of language use (Fromkin and Rodman, 1993.) It is of two types: rule-bound creativity and rule-breaking creativity. The researchers explore creativity employed in different language discourse such as slips of the pen, slips of the tongue, oxymoron, paradox, collocation, blends, anomaly, …

The “Foul” Protection For A Photographer’S Original And Creative Choices In A Photograph: Exploring The Implications Of Rentmeester V. Nike, Inc. On Creativity In Photography, Olivia Lattanza

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Interdisciplinary Research Team On Programmer Creativity In Support Of Respondent, Ralph D. Clifford, Firas Khatib, Trina Kershaw, Kavitha Chandra, Jay Mccarthy

Faculty Publications

This brief answers the two primary issues that are associated with the first question before the Court. First, the programmers’ expression of the Java-based application programmer interfaces (“APIs”) are sufficiently creative to satisfy that requirement of copyright law. Second, the idea expression limitation codified in Section 102(b) of Copyright Act does not establish that the APIs are ideas. Both of these assertions are supported by the empirical research undertaken by the Research Team. This brief expresses no opinion on the resolution of the fair use question that is also before the Court.

Rules, Tricks And Emancipation, Jessie Allen

Book Chapters

Rules and tricks are generally seen as different things. Rules produce order and control; tricks produce chaos. Rules help us predict how things will work out. Tricks are deceptive and transgressive, built to surprise us and confound our expectations in ways that can be entertaining or devastating. But rules can be tricky. General prohibitions and prescriptions generate surprising results in particular contexts. In some situations, a rule produces results that seem far from what the rule makers expected and antagonistic to the interests the rule is understood to promote. This contradictory aspect of rules is usually framed as a downside …

Law Library Blog (December 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Thinking Outside The Checkbox: Examining The Benefits Of Depression In The Workplace, Tyler L. Jensen

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

No abstract provided.

Creative Communities And Intellectual Property Law, Laura A. Heymann

Laura A. Heymann

No abstract provided.

Ok, Google, Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Lawyering?, Melissa Love Koenig, Julie A. Oseid, Amy Vorenberg

Marquette Law Review

Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace human lawyering? The answer is

no. Despite worries that AI is getting so sophisticated that it could take over

the profession, there is little cause for concern. Indeed, the surge of AI in the

legal field has crystalized the real essence of effective lawyering. The lawyer’s

craft goes beyond what AI can do because we listen with empathy to clients’

stories, strategize to find the story that might not be obvious, thoughtfully use

our imagination and judgment to decide which story will appeal to an audience,

and creatively tell those winning stories.

This Article reviews …

Derivative Works And Making Sense Of The Maxim That 'Others Are Free To Copy The Original. They Are Not Free To Copy The Copy.', David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

This is a paper about some of the most entertaining and challenging cases in America’s copyright law jurisprudence concerning derivative works as copyrightable subject matter, and the closely related right to prepare derivative works. The cases are entertaining because they involve very familiar works of authorship, and they are challenging because the rulings are often difficult to reconcile due to the fact that the courts are grappling with copyright’s elusive originality standard as applied to derivative works as well the copyright owner’s right to prepare derivative works. Instead of attempting to say something ‘original’ about originality, my goal for this …

Rwu Law News: The E-Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law September 2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Creativity Revisited, Ralph D. Clifford

Faculty Publications

The University of New Hampshire's Scholarship Redux Conference invited a reexamination of an earlier work of IP scholarship to address what has happened in the area since the time of its original publication. As my contribution to the Conference, I revisited my 1997 article that discussed the consequences of the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence ("AI") on the production of new copyrightable or patentable works as well as the follow-up article I published in 2004 that focused expressly on copyright law. The primary call of the conference was to discuss the "legal predictions [that were] right -- or wrong!" In …

Registration Is Fundamental, Brian L. Frye, Nicole E. Pottinger

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Under the Copyright Act, copyright owners can file infringement actions only if registration of their copyright claim with the Copyright Office “has been made” or “has been refused.” The United States Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, in order to decide whether registration is “made” when a claimant files a registration application or when the Copyright Office registers the claim.

This article argues that the Court should hold that registration occurs when the Copyright Office registers the claim, in order to ensure that federal courts can benefit from the expertise of the Copyright Office. The Copyright …

Creative Communities And Intellectual Property Law, Laura A. Heymann

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Theory For A Starving Obese, Ishai Shapira Kalter

Theses and Dissertations

Theory for a Starving Obese (2017) is both a book and an installation. During the years 2015-2017 I began writing Theory for a Starving Obese; a collection of essays and art criticism about exhibitions that took place in white cubes in New York. I was following my dissatisfaction, and hoped to delve deeper into the question “What is Contemporary Art?” At the end of a process, I sent seventeen envelopes to artists who exhibited solo shows in New York and whose works I have criticized. Each envelope consists of one digital drawing (שרבוט, pronounced Shirbut), DVD with the …

The Problem Of Creative Collaboration, Anthony J. Casey, Andres Sawicki

William & Mary Law Review

In this Article, we explore a central problem facing creative industries: how to organize collaborative creative production. We argue that informal rules are a significant and pervasive—but nonetheless underappreciated—tool for solving the problem. While existing literature has focused on how informal rules sustain incentives for producing creative work, we demonstrate how such rules can facilitate and organize collaboration in the creative space.

We also suggest that informal rules can be a better fit for creative organization than formal law. On the one side, unique features of creativity, especially high uncertainty and low verifiability, lead to organizational challenges that formal law …

R&D Spending And Patenting In The Technology Hardware Sector In Nations With And Without Fair Use, Michael Palmedo

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

This working paper uses two common indicators of innovation to see how the technology hardware sector compares in countries with and without fair use. It illustrates that research and development spending by firms in these industries has been higher in countries with fair use, controlling for other firm- and country-level factors. It then shows more patents have been granted to the technology sector in countries that have adopted fair use, relative to patents granted to firms in the same industries in other countries, controlling for other country-level factors.

Fair Use Is Good For Creativity And Innovation, Bill Patry

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Commenting on legal debates in other countries is usually bad manners. When, however, the debates concern a law from your own country, and that law is being misrepresented, it may be of service to set the record straight. The record, based on almost 300 years of Anglo-American case law and the experiences of those of us who apply fair use every day in our jobs, demonstrates that fair use is good for creativity and innovation, and in practice works well. You don’t have to take my word for it; if you are willing to put the time in, and have …

Ip Things As Boundary Objects: The Case Of The Copyright Work, Michael J. Madison

Articles

My goal is to explore the meanings and functions of the objects of intellectual property: the work of authorship (or copyright work) in copyright, the invention in patent, and the mark and the sign in trademark. This paper takes up the example of the copyright work.

It is usually argued that the central challenge in understanding the work is to develop a sensible method for appreciating its boundaries. Those boundaries, conventionally understood as the metaphorical "metes and bounds" of the work, might be established by deferring to the intention of the author, or by searching for authorship (creativity or originality) …

Against Creativity, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

According to the Supreme Court, copyright requires both independent creation and creativity. The independent creation requirement provides that copyright cannot protect an element of a work of authorship that is copied from a previously existing work. But scholars disagree about the meaning of and justification for the creativity requirement.

The creativity requirement should be abandoned because it is irrelevant to the scope of copyrightable subject matter and distorts copyright doctrine by encouraging inefficient “creativity rhetoric.” The purpose of copyright is to encourage the production of economically valuable works of authorship, not creativity.

Uncitral And The Enforceability Of Imsas: The Debate Heats Up – Part 2, Dorcas Quek Anderson, Nadja Alexander, Anna Howard

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is the second of four in a series of blog posts on Kluwer Mediation Blog. They were published in conjunction with the the 65th session of the UNCITRAL Working Group II on arbitration and conciliation. The Working Group has turned its attention to the settlement of commercial disputes and in particular on the preparation of an instrument on the enforcement of international commercial settlement agreements resulting from conciliation. (Note that in UNCITRAL speak, the term ‘conciliation’ is used interchangeably with ‘mediation’. ) In terms of the type of instrument, the Working Group is considering the possibility of a convention, …

The Law Of The Platform, Orly Lobel

Faculty Scholarship

New digital platform companies are turning everything into an available resource: services, products, spaces, connections, and knowledge, all of which would otherwise be collecting dust. Unsurprisingly then, the platform economy defies conventional regulatory theory. Millions of people are becoming part-time entrepreneurs, disrupting established business models and entrenched market interests, challenging regulated industries, and turning ideas about consumption, work, risk, and ownership on their head. Paradoxically, as the digital platform economy becomes more established, we are also at an all-time high in regulatory permitting, licensing, and protection. The battle over law in the platform is therefore both conceptual and highly practical. …

Picasso On Staff: Employee Classification, Copyrights, And The Creative Process, Sarah A. Howes

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

Risky Ip, Andres Sawicki

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Copy Process, Joseph P. Fishman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There’s more than one way to copy. The process of copying can be laborious or easy, expensive or cheap, educative or unenriching. But the two intellectual property regimes that make copying an element of liability, copyright and trade secrecy, approach these distinctions differently. Copyright conflates them. Infringement doctrine considers all copying processes equally suspect, asking only whether the resulting product is substantially similar to the protected work. By contrast, trade secrecy asks not only whether but also how the defendant copied. It limits liability to those who appropriate information through means that the law deems improper.

This Article argues that …