Intellectual Property Law and Copyright Laws

After years of preparation and a decidedly rocky start to ICANN’s New gTLD Program due to a glitch in the gTLD application system, the applications are in, and ICANN will soon begin evaluating the TLD candidates.

Over the past decade, pundits have predicted that new companies harnessing the internet and related electronic devices would bring about the end of the record industry, print newspapers, and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

The Internet is about to become a much bigger and more complex place for trademark owners.

In the first federal court ruling on whether training generative AI models with copyrighted materials constitutes fair use, U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a mixed but monumental decision on June 24, 2025, in Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC (N.D. Cal., No. 24-05417 WHA).

In a significant development for AI developers, on May 24, U.S. District Judge William Alsup has ruled in Bartz v. Anthropic PBC that training AI models on copyrighted books may qualify as fair use under U.S. copyright law...

A federal district court in San Francisco ruled that training AI models with copyright-protected works is fair use.

The Supreme Court of California held that it is a violation of California law for businesses to request and record a credit card holder’s ZIP code in connection with credit card transactions. Under California’s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act of 1971, businesses are prohibited from requesting that cardholders supply personal identification information in connection with credit card transactions.

In a case with major implications for retailers and marketers, the Supreme Court of California ruled on February 10, 2011 that state law prohibits businesses from requesting and recording ZIP codes from consumers prior to credit card transactions, including requests for use in marketing.

On March 11, 2011, the FTC announced that it had reached a settlement with the social networking site Twitter regarding privacy failures on the site to adequately safeguard user information, which led to two high-profile hacker attacks in 2009.

The Northern District of Ohio denied a motion to compel the plaintiff to produce test results referenced in its initial disclosures and complaint.

Marshall Gerstein patent attorney Andy Smith offers his insights on AI product patenting in an article published by Today's General Counsel.

On June 5, 2025, Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart modified former Director Kathi Vidal's July 2024 affirmation of an adverse judgment canceling 183 challenged...