What is being heard
According to Pinsent Masons, Getty Images will ask the Court of Appeal of England and Wales to find Stability AI liable for copyright infringement in the UK. The High Court rejected this last year. The appeal is being heard on Wednesday, 11 November.
Why primary infringement fell away
According to the report, Getty could not show that the training of Stable Diffusion took place in the UK. Because primary infringement claims under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 require acts in the UK, Getty withdrew them during the trial and focused on other legal grounds. Whether training in the UK constitutes primary infringement has therefore not yet been confirmed by the courts, according to Pinsent Masons.
Secondary infringement at the centre
The appeal centres on the secondary infringement claims. According to the report, the High Court held that an AI system can count as an "article", but rejected the claim: an AI model is only an "infringing copy" if it has at some point contained a permanent or transient copy of the training works. Getty had, however, accepted that Stable Diffusion does not itself store its training data. The Court of Appeal is therefore likely to focus mainly on whether the judge applied the law correctly.
Expert views diverge
Whether training data is memorised in models is, per Pinsent Masons, disputed. Academics at Stanford University say it is feasible to extract in-copyright training data from production LLMs. The Regional Court of Munich sided with GEMA in two cases against AI providers and assumed systematic memorisation. An adviser to the EU's highest court challenged that assumption.
Assessment
For rights holders and AI developers, according to the source, a judgment from London is unlikely to end the uncertainty entirely. Companies training or offering models in the UK may still lack clarity on liability risks. Whether concrete obligations follow for your organisation depends on the outcome of the appeal.
Policy pressure
According to the report, policymakers are also under pressure. An October report from the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford called for copyright reforms, including a binding licensing regime. Pinsent Masons reports that the government said in March it would not pursue a licensing requirement or other consulted reform options, and would first gather further evidence. MP Damian Hinds has also introduced a private members' bill, with its second reading set for 27 November.
Sources
Editorially owned by Ideal Syka. Sources and method: Newsroom & method. Tips and corrections: ai@i6eal.de.
