Under construction
Intellectual Property
Names, content, inventions, and know-how.
This topic is under construction. We’re writing guidance for the questions below, and we’ll add it here as it’s published.
Questions this topic answers
- Should we trademark our name?
- Who owns work a contractor creates?
- Who owns what AI helps us make?
Articles
-
Fair Use and AI Training: Two Recent Decisions Highlight the Complexity of This Issue
Skadden
Whether training an AI model on copyrighted content qualifies as fair use is being decided case by case and courts are not reaching consistent answers. Skadden analyzes two recent decisions and explains what factors courts are weighing. This article is essential reading for any company building AI products.
-
The Open Source Legacy and AI's Licensing Challenge
Linux Foundation
Open source software is code made publicly available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute, but "open" doesn't mean without legal obligation. The license attached to open source software determines what you can do with it, and some licenses include surprising obligations. Traditional open source licensing frameworks are straining under AI's unique characteristics with models trained on proprietary data and weights that can't be read like code. The Linux Foundation examines what "open source AI" actually means now and proposes the need for an open source specific license called OpenMDW, or Open Model, Data, and Weights License.
-
'Open Source' in the Age of AI
IAPP
Open source AI is becoming more readily available, as is open-weight AI such as Meta's Llama 3. Using an open-source or open-weight AI model doesn't eliminate other significant legal hurdles, such as privacy obligations. IAPP examines the privacy compliance dimensions for organizations building on open-weight models.
Laws
Laws live on their federal, state, and international pages in the Resource Library. These are the ones tagged to this topic.
Federal
Federal
Copyright Act
17 U.S.C. §§ 101–1205
The foundational federal law protecting original works of authorship. Copyright attaches automatically upon fixation; registration is not required for protection but is required before suing for infringement and to recover statutory damages.
Federal
Defend Trade Secrets Act
DTSA — 18 U.S.C. §§ 1836–1839
Created a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. Lets companies sue in federal court and seek injunctions, damages, and — in egregious cases — seizure of misappropriated materials.
Federal
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DMCA — 17 U.S.C. § 512
Establishes safe harbors for online service providers against liability for user-uploaded infringing content, provided they implement notice-and-takedown procedures. Critical for any platform hosting user-generated content.
Federal
Open Source Licensing Frameworks
OSS Licenses
Not a single law but a critical compliance area. Open source licenses create legally binding obligations when you use, modify, or distribute open source software. Key license families: Permissive (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD — few obligations, allow proprietary use); Weak Copyleft (LGPL, MPL — share-alike requirements apply only to the licensed component); Strong Copyleft (GPL, AGPL — require distributing source code of the entire combined work). AGPL is particularly significant for SaaS companies — network use may trigger copyleft obligations even without distributing software. Every tech company needs an open source policy.
Federal
Patent Act
35 U.S.C. §§ 1–390
The federal law governing patents for inventions and designs. Establishes the USPTO, defines patentable subject matter, and creates enforcement rights. Patent eligibility for software remains a contested area post-Alice.
Other topics