#intellectual-property

#intellectual-property

OpenAI and training data company Handshake AI are asking third-party contractors to upload real work that they did in past and current jobs, according to a report in Wired. This appears to be part of a larger strategy across AI companies that are hiring contractors to generate high-quality training data in the hopes that this will eventually allow their models to automate more white-collar work.

Researchers have developed a tool that they say can make stolen high-value proprietary data used in AI systems useless, a solution that CSOs may have to adopt to protect their sophisticated large language models (LLMs). The technique, created by researchers from universities in China and Singapore, is to inject plausible but false data into what's known as a knowledge graph (KG) created by an AI operator. A knowledge graph holds the proprietary data used by the LLM.

I feel I'm finally getting established enough that we can make a Mistborn game happen. ... This is at Step One only, but it's an encouraging One.

In addition to telling Renee's story about how she found her way into the intellectual property world, and through our sometimes-comical banter, we together explore what it really takes to build, sustain, and continuously reinvent an entrepreneurial company like IPWatchdog. What emerged was a practical roadmap for entrepreneurship, invention, navigating platform risk, one focused on the necessity of constantly being ready to pivot as old business models start to show signs of age and ultimately falter.

On a Hard Forkin' Christmas, my true love gave to me 12 A.I. bubbles, 11 chimpanzinis, 10 Signal war chats, nine Meta reorgs, eight MechaHitlers, seven White House memecoins, six Roblox scandals, five Bum Bum creams, Bum, bum bum four Humane pins, three code reds, two robot pants, and a bot trained on all our I.P. That's intellectual property. Can Ezra Klein do that? I don't think so.

Andrea Zevallos declared 2016 her "year of dating." She was twenty-seven, working at Universal Studios Hollywood, the theme park, and determined to find love. She calculated it would take three dates a week. By December, she was losing hope. "It was exhausting," she said. Then, while scrolling OkCupid, she noticed a "cute guy" with a "Hamilton" reference in his handle. His name was Alex Switzky, and like her he was a musical-theatre enthusiast and aspiring screenwriter.

Sony is paying approximately $460 milliion to purchase Peanuts [PDF] and its characters, including Snoopy and Charlie Brown, created by Charles M. Schulz. That's a 41 percent stake Sony is buying from Canadian firm WildBrain. Since Sony bought 39 percent of the franchise back in 2018, this will give the company an 80 percent stake. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals, but Peanuts will become Sony's consolidated subsidiary once it's closed. Schulz's family still owns the remaining 20 percent stake in the franchise.

Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced plans to sell Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios and streaming service HBO Max to Netflix, following a bidding war that also ended with a hostile takeover bid by Paramount. The planned sale would create a mammoth streaming and production giant with intellectual property rights to beloved franchises including Batman and Harry Potter. It's also sure to draw scrutiny from antitrust enforcers at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

No doubt Netflix is the default streaming service,

It is significant that the new Paramount regime's first move was to prise Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer away from Netflix. And Netflix, of course, have made their billions by upending the traditional pitch-session-to-cinema pipeline that had sustained the film industry for decades. They have signed up legions of the classiest directors, hogged nearly all the audience-friendly documentaries and premiered one water-cooler series after another.

Jeff Bezos last month went public with his new AI firm, which is currently being called Project Prometheus. The effort had been in development for a while, but is still relatively secretive. There's no website and only a sparse LinkedIn page describing itself as "AI for the physical economy." The $6.2-billion startup may be facing lots of competition from other AI companies, including giants like Microsoft and OpenAI.

Earlier this year, Bungie found itself in the center of an unexpectedplagiarism scandal. The studio's upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, was found to have included work lifted from online artist Antireal without her knowledge or consent. Bungie fessed up and apologized, claiming it was an accident. Now, five months after the controversy, the artist, Antireal, has posted on X stating that the " Marathon art issue has been resolved with Bungie and Sony Interactive Entertainment to my satisfaction."

The eight-episode series, titled "The Hunt" (Traqués in French), had been set to premiere on Apple TV next Wednesday, December 3, with a two-episode launch followed by weekly installments through the end of the month. But then last week, Apple quietly removed all the trailers, listings, and other promotional materials for the show from its app and website without explanation.

Samsung Display had an ongoing three-year legal battle against BOE over trade secrets theft and patent infringements related to OLED tech, and according to a new report from Yonhap News, the two sides have settled their dispute. According to the report, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued an official statement confirming that the case has been suspended. While details of the withdrawal were not disclosed,

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied certiorari in Halicki v. Carroll Shelby Licensing, a case in which Denice Shakarian Halicki, widow of the creator of the "Gone in 60 Seconds" film franchise sought review of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision that held the car character "Eleanor," a customized Ford Mustang, was not entitled to copyright protection.

OpenAI's generative AI platform doesn't have many fans in the creative community, and it seems you can count Trey Stone and Matt Parker among them. The South Park duo largely center this week's episode around the AI video platform, with a plot in which Butters ignites a school-wide scandal after seeking revenge on his ex-girlfriend, Red, by using Sora to generate a video of her farting and getting urinated on by Santa.

Despite the AI boom, influencer brand deals are largely being written without clauses related to AI, intellectual property and copyright, which could leave creators and brands exposed, IP lawyers say. At least five creators (ranging in follower size and content type) Digiday spoke with confirmed no such clauses have been added to their brand deals this year. Those clauses could include usage rights limiting a brand's ability to use a creator's synthetic name, image and likeness, or curbing creators' AI tool usage in creative assets without disclosing use.

Stealing intellectual property (IP) assets such as music and movies diverts revenue away from American businesses, which leads to fewer jobs for a range of American workers in the entertainment industry. Some countries in the world actively address this pirating through enforcement of site blocking by their respective national Internet Service Providers. However, the United States is not one of them, in part due to governmental pressure from certain Big Tech companies.

What's the point in a trademark if it costs so much to defend it? We did everything by the book to protect our brand, but the system isn't set up to support smaller businesses when this kind of thing happens.

The tools they are building are being used across the production cycle. Some, like Moonvalley, are enhancing special effects. Others are promising to help with marketing, content distribution, and content discovery. It's a challenging time for Hollywood. Budgets generally aren't what they used to be, and studios know they need to do what they can to make projects faster and cheaper. Enter AI.

On this week's episode, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels get into the news of Quince dodging claims from Ugg's parent, Deckers Brands, that it unlawfully copied two of its best-selling styles. Next, they discuss the announcement from cosmetics company E.l.f that it will be offering live shopping on streaming service Twitch, and the implications for the potential resurgence of streaming in social commerce.

The University of Akron School of Law's Intellectual Property Policy Institute (IPPI) is now accepting applications for the 2026-2027 Thomas Edison Innovation Law & Policy Fellowship-a year-long, non-resident program supporting rigorous scholarship on intellectual property, creativity, and innovation law. Now entering its twelfth year, the Edison Fellowship brings together a small group of U.S. scholars for three intensive, invitation-only roundtables with senior commentators including Professors John Duffy, Erika Lietzan, Michael Risch, and Mark Schultz.