Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) Podcast

Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge
  • 0.0 (0)
  • NEWS

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law CIPIL was founded in 2004. Through its activities, CIPIL aims to promote the investigation, understanding and critical appraisal of these important fields of law. The CIPIL Intellectual Property Seminar Series brings together specialist speakers to discuss prevailing issues in relation to copyright, patents, trademarks, design rights, and other subjects. The Centre brings together a group of legal academics already recognised for their historical and inter-disciplinary, as well as doctrinal, research. Drawing on the resources of Cambridge University, CIPIL is ideally positioned to carry out and promote well-informed interdisciplinary work. For more information see the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/

  1. 2D AGO

    Transformative Landscapes: How Generative AI is Shaping the Contours of US Copyright Law and Policy: CIPIL Evening Seminar

    Speaker: Professor Bhamati Viswanathan, Visitor, Cambridge Law Faculty and Fellow at the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School Biography: Bhamati Viswanathan is a Senior Visitor at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law and a Fellow (Non-Resident) at the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School (New York). Prior to joining the Cambridge Faculty of Law, she was Assistant Professor at New England Law | Boston, where she taught copyright law, artificial intelligence and the law, law and the visual arts, intellectual property law, and U.S. Constitutional law. She is the author of “Cultivating Copyright: How Creative Industries Can Harness Intellectual Property to Survive the Digital Age” (Routledge/Taylor & Francis Press). She currently holds an Edison Fellowship from the Intellectual Property Policy Institute at University of Akron Law School, under whose aegis she is writing a series of articles on the disparate impact of copyright law on women creators and women-centric work. She is also planning a book on the nexus of intellectual property and arts/culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Bhamati serves as Chair of the American Bar Association Intellectual Property Section: Visual and Dramatics Works Committee. She is a Faculty Advisor on the Copyright Alliance Academic Advisory Board. She serves as Faculty Partner to the News/Media Alliance. She is Education Advisor to the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA)/ Massachusetts Arts and Business Council. She is also a Faculty Advisor to the Journal of the Copyright Society; and she was a Trustee of the Copyright Society, as well as Chair of its New England Chapter. She holds an S.J.D./LL.M. from University of Pennsylvania Law School; a J.D. from University of Michigan Law School; and a B.A. from Williams College. She is a competitive figure skater, violinist, and published poet/translator and lives in Boston. Abstract: The training of generativeAI models on ingested work is a hotly contested area of U.S. copyright law. In this Seminar, I will inquire whether such training may constitute “fair use” under the nonexclusive four-factor test of the U.S. Copyright Act. Currently, courts are wrestling with the fair use defense in several major cases, including Thompson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence; Bartz v. Anthropic; Kadrey v. Meta; and the consolidated litigation of In re: OpenAI. Another open question is whether AI outputs infringe copyright in other works. Here, plaintiffs must establish that AI outputs infringe their works by passing the threshold of the “substantial similarity” test. I will discuss the test in the context of AI litigation, and will suggest that the relatively novel “market dilution” theory, focusing on harm caused by stylistically similar outputs, might be applied to weigh against a fair use defense for GenAI training. I will also address whether the theory of “vicarious liability” might be fruitfully brought to bear against certain genAI companies. Lastly, I will ask what action Congress can, or should, take, with a view to striking a fair balance between meeting the needs of innovative technologies and securing the rights of creative industries and creators. As an example, I will raise a recent proposal (in which I was involved) that Congress explicitly prohibit GenAI training on materials derived from digital repositories of unlicensed materials (so-called “shadow libraries”). For more information (and to download slides) see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

    54 min

  2. OCT 31

    Rethinking the 'Copy' in Copyright: CIPIL Evening Seminar

    Speaker: Dr Yin Harn Lee, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol Biography: Dr Yin Harn Lee is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol. Her research interests lie primarily in copyright law. A significant part of her research focuses on copyright and videogames, and she is also interested in historical aspects of copyright as well as the interface between intellectual property and personal property. Abstract: The exclusive right to control the copying or reproduction of a work has been described by one leading copyright treatise as ‘the most fundamental, and historically the oldest, right of a copyright owner’. The first British copyright statute, the 1710 Statute of Anne, conferred on rightholders the exclusive right to print and reprint their books. Since then, the right has expanded far beyond its legislative origins, and now encompasses acts of copying in both digital and analogue form, those that are both temporary and permanent, and those that are merely incidental to the use of the work. Scholars have expressed concern about the now-expansive scope of the right, and there have been calls to restrict the right (e.g. by removing ‘non-expressive copying’ and copying that does not enable the use of the material in question ‘as a work’) or to replace it altogether with a broad right of ‘commercial exploitation’. This paper will show that, while these proposals are laudable and inventive, they nevertheless encounter the same pitfalls as those faced by English courts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when called upon to define the scope of what constitutes ‘copying’. It will argue that the root of the problem lies in the absence of stable, developed principles for defining the legitimate scope of the rightholder’s market, and that attempts at framing this as a question of statutory interpretation only obscure this fundamental fact. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

    55 min

  3. OCT 17

    Patents for Wellbeing: CIPIL Evening Seminar

    Speaker: Professor Andrew Christie, University of Melbourne Biography: Professor Andrew Christie was the foundation appointment to the Chair of Intellectual Property at the University of Melbourne in 2002.He holds BSc and LLB (Hons) degrees from the University of Melbourne, a LLM from the University of London, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge (Emmanuel College). Admitted to legal practice in Australia and the United Kingdom, he has worked in the intellectual property departments of law firms in Melbourne and London. He is a former Fulbright Senior Scholar, and has held research and teaching appointments at the University of Cambridge, Duke University, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Toronto. Awarded 12 Australian Research Council grants and instrumental in winning other research funding in excess of $11 million, he has authored more than 120 publications, and delivered by invitation more than 180 public addresses in 20 countries, across all areas of intellectual property law. He has served on all of the Australian government’s advisory committees on intellectual property – the Copyright Law Review Committee, the Advisory Council on Intellectual Property, and the Plant Breeder’s Rights Advisory Committee – and has been an expert advisor to World Intellectual Property Organization on a number of occasions. He currently chairs the Trans-Tasman IP Attorneys Board, the regulator of the Australian and New Zealand patent attorney profession. Abstract: With more than 18 million patents for inventions in force across 140 jurisdictions, patents are a significant area of the law. However, the traditional justifications for having a patent system are incomplete, and do not take full account of developments in economic thinking that recognise the primary purpose of economics is to enhance human wellbeing. The primary purpose of patents should be likewise. There is sparse academic and policy literature on the relevance of wellbeing economics to patent policy, and what exists leaves unanswered many questions about how the patent system can be used to achieve this policy objective. This presentation answers those questions, by tracing the evolution of wellbeing economics, identifying the doctrinal levers available to implement patent policy, and providing practical examples of the application of those levers to ensure the patent system incentivises innovations that advance wellbeing. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

    1h 1m

  4. APR 3

    Harnessing GenAI to Inform IP Standards: CIPIL Spring Conference 2025

    Speaker: Professor Niva Elkin Koren (Tel Aviv University) Session 4: Concluding Thoughts – AI Transforming IP On Saturday 29th March 2025, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Is AI Transforming IP?' For the last few years, lots of attention has been paid to AI and IP. The Supreme Court has already considered whether AI can be regarded as an inventor. There is also on-going litigation, in various jurisdictions, on whether training AI systems with copyright material infringes copyright, in what circumstances the outputs might infringe; as well as when, if at all, AI-generated content, designs or other outputs might be protected by intellectual property rights and, if so, for whose benefit. While these are important questions that involve the application of the existing understandings of the law to new factual scenarios, the conference moved beyond them to focus on: (i) what AI reveals about existing law; and (ii) how AI might be changing IP, altering the legal tests with which we have become familiar, as well as the assumptions that underlie them – and what the implications might be. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

    56 min

  5. APR 3

    AI and IPR Enforcement – Challenges and Opportunities: CIPIL Spring Conference 2025

    Speaker: Mr Dennis Collopy (University of Hertfordshire) Session 3: AI Transforming the Scope of Protection and Enforcement On Saturday 29th March 2025, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Is AI Transforming IP?' For the last few years, lots of attention has been paid to AI and IP. The Supreme Court has already considered whether AI can be regarded as an inventor. There is also on-going litigation, in various jurisdictions, on whether training AI systems with copyright material infringes copyright, in what circumstances the outputs might infringe; as well as when, if at all, AI-generated content, designs or other outputs might be protected by intellectual property rights and, if so, for whose benefit. While these are important questions that involve the application of the existing understandings of the law to new factual scenarios, the conference moved beyond them to focus on: (i) what AI reveals about existing law; and (ii) how AI might be changing IP, altering the legal tests with which we have become familiar, as well as the assumptions that underlie them – and what the implications might be. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

    29 min

  6. APR 3

    (Re)evaluating trade secrets protection in light of AI: CIPIL Spring Conference 2025

    Speaker: Professor Tanya Aplin (King’s College London) Session 3: AI Transforming the Scope of Protection and Enforcement On Saturday 29th March 2025, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Is AI Transforming IP?' For the last few years, lots of attention has been paid to AI and IP. The Supreme Court has already considered whether AI can be regarded as an inventor. There is also on-going litigation, in various jurisdictions, on whether training AI systems with copyright material infringes copyright, in what circumstances the outputs might infringe; as well as when, if at all, AI-generated content, designs or other outputs might be protected by intellectual property rights and, if so, for whose benefit. While these are important questions that involve the application of the existing understandings of the law to new factual scenarios, the conference moved beyond them to focus on: (i) what AI reveals about existing law; and (ii) how AI might be changing IP, altering the legal tests with which we have become familiar, as well as the assumptions that underlie them – and what the implications might be. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

    23 min

  7. APR 3

    AI and the Right to Research: CIPIL Spring Conference 2025

    Speaker: Professor Sean Flynn (Washington College of Law) Session 3: AI Transforming the Scope of Protection and Enforcement On Saturday 29th March 2025, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Is AI Transforming IP?' For the last few years, lots of attention has been paid to AI and IP. The Supreme Court has already considered whether AI can be regarded as an inventor. There is also on-going litigation, in various jurisdictions, on whether training AI systems with copyright material infringes copyright, in what circumstances the outputs might infringe; as well as when, if at all, AI-generated content, designs or other outputs might be protected by intellectual property rights and, if so, for whose benefit. While these are important questions that involve the application of the existing understandings of the law to new factual scenarios, the conference moved beyond them to focus on: (i) what AI reveals about existing law; and (ii) how AI might be changing IP, altering the legal tests with which we have become familiar, as well as the assumptions that underlie them – and what the implications might be. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

    33 min

  8. APR 3

    Re-thinking IP Territoriality in the Context of AI: CIPIL Spring Conference 2025

    Speaker: Professor Mireille van Eechoud (University of Amsterdam) Session 3: AI Transforming the Scope of Protection and Enforcement On Saturday 29th March 2025, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Is AI Transforming IP?' For the last few years, lots of attention has been paid to AI and IP. The Supreme Court has already considered whether AI can be regarded as an inventor. There is also on-going litigation, in various jurisdictions, on whether training AI systems with copyright material infringes copyright, in what circumstances the outputs might infringe; as well as when, if at all, AI-generated content, designs or other outputs might be protected by intellectual property rights and, if so, for whose benefit. While these are important questions that involve the application of the existing understandings of the law to new factual scenarios, the conference moved beyond them to focus on: (i) what AI reveals about existing law; and (ii) how AI might be changing IP, altering the legal tests with which we have become familiar, as well as the assumptions that underlie them – and what the implications might be. For more information see: https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference

    19 min
See All (164)

About

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law CIPIL was founded in 2004. Through its activities, CIPIL aims to promote the investigation, understanding and critical appraisal of these important fields of law. The CIPIL Intellectual Property Seminar Series brings together specialist speakers to discuss prevailing issues in relation to copyright, patents, trademarks, design rights, and other subjects. The Centre brings together a group of legal academics already recognised for their historical and inter-disciplinary, as well as doctrinal, research. Drawing on the resources of Cambridge University, CIPIL is ideally positioned to carry out and promote well-informed interdisciplinary work. For more information see the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/

Information

You Might Also Like