Copyright Law in the News
Updates from the US, UK, and India
Well, 2025 is off to quite a roaring start. Here are some copyright law news stories you should know about:
Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan Prevails in $81 Million Copyright Lawsuit
Film director Francesca Gregorini brought suit against Apple, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan and others seeking $81 million in damages. The suit, filed in 2020, alleged that Shyamalan and collaborators had lifted narrative elements of Gergorini’s 2013 film, “The Truth About Emanuel,” without credit when writing a limited series entitled “The Servant”.
The five year long legal battle ended yesterday with a federal jury ruling unanimously in favor of the Defendants. The jury verdict form is embedded below:
For more detail click here for Variety’s report.
Proposed Copyright Law Overhaul in the UK Draws Fire from Music Royalty
The tension between humans and artificial intelligence is increasing. This newsletter is on the side of human creators, human artists. Yes, we are in the age where that actually needs to explicitly stated. With that in mind, the UK Intellectual Property Office (“UKIPO”) has been considering some disastrous changes to UK Copyright Law.
In 2022, the UKIPO published a document entitled Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: Copyright and Patents: Government Response to Consultation. The document proposed allowing AI companies to use legally protected work for commercial text and data mining (“TDM”) purposes. This would pave the way for AI companies to mine protected work.
If you are a reader of this newsletter, you know that text and data mining are at the heart of much of the litigation in United States against OpenAI. Go back to the TCLR archives to read those updates.
Paul McCartney has come out strongly against the proposal, with a very commonsense rationale: if the government fails to protect the creative sector, the creative sector will go away. In an interview with the BBC on this topic, Mr. McCartney said:
"We’re the people, you’re the government. You’re supposed to protect us. So you know, if you're putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you're not going to have them."
You can read more from the BBC coverage right here.
OpenAI Sued in India for Copyright Infringment
In a continuation of the Everyone vs. OpenAI litigation saga, there is now a case pending against OpenAI in the High Court of Delhi, India, brought by ANI Media, a New Dehli based media company. This appears to be a case of first impression in the Indian court system. Reuters reports on this here.
The gravamen of the complaint is that OpenAI infringed on ANI Media’s copyrighted material by using that material to train OpenAI’s large language models. Sound familiar? Yes.
Arguments on jurisdictional matters are scheduled to occur in February. More on this as it develops.
J. Bryan Tuk is a US based attorney and the founder of Tuk Business & Entertainment Law, and a member of the American Society of Composers and Producers (ASCAP).