The Future? Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property, An Unresolved Question of Training Data

The legal landscape is shifting rapidly and unevenly across jurisdictions. In the UK, the government is required to publish a full report on AI and copyright by March 2026, potentially introducing an opt-out model similar to the EU framework. In the US, the outcome of “Andersen v. Stability AI” will offer the first jury-tested assessment of fair use in the AI training context.

For rights holders, the message from the Getty case is sobering: even a well-resourced, determined claimant faces structural obstacles, particularly the territorial limits of copyright law. For AI developers, the picture is equally complex. The Hamburg, Munich and ongoing US proceedings demonstrate that copyright law has not simply conceded the field to algorithmic learning. The fundamental question is whether machines can ethically, and legally, learn from human creativity without permission or payment, remains entirely open.

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The key cases cited are:

UK

Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch) The High Court’s November 2025 ruling, which dismissed the secondary copyright claim on the basis that model weights are not “infringing copies” under the CDPA, while finding limited trademark infringement where the Getty watermark appeared in early Stable Diffusion outputs.

US

Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., 700 F. Supp. 3d 853 (N.D. Cal. 2023) A class action by artists including Sarah Andersen, where in August 2024 Judge Orrick allowed the core copyright claims to proceed to trial, set for September 2026. NYU Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law Artnet News

Zhang v. Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., No. 3:24-CV-02531 (N.D. Cal. 2024) — artists suing Google over its Imagen image generator, alleging their copyrighted works were used without authorisation in the training dataset. Ballard Spahr

EU/Germany

Landgericht Hamburg, 27 September 2024, AS. 310 O 227/23: A stock photographer suing the non-profit LAION over its LAION-5B dataset, with the defence relying on the TDM exception under Article 4 of the DSM Directive 2019/790. https://www.euipo.europa.eu/en/law/recent-case-law/germany-hamburg-district-court-310-o-22723-laion-v-robert-kneschke

In Germany, the Robert Kneschke v. LAION e.V. judgment of 27 September 2024 (Case No. 310 O 227/23) An early European court assessment of generative AI training data and copyright. A professional photographer sued the non-profit LAION over the inclusion of his image in LAION’s open-source dataset used to train AI models. The Hamburg Regional Court dismissed his copyright claim, holding that the automated downloading and analysis of images to create a training dataset was covered by the text and data mining exceptions implemented in German law under Articles 3 and 4 of the EU Digital Single Market Directive.

On the other hand, A Munich court ruling in November 2025 issued an injunction against OpenAI for reproducing copyrighted German song lyrics, finding the model had memorised and reproduced protected text directly contradicting the “pattern learning” argument used by Stability AI in the UK. Insidetechlaw