High Court sides with Bird & Bird's Stability AI in landmark copyright clash

Bird & Bird-represented Stability AI has secured a major victory in the closely watched High Court battle with Getty Images over the use of copyrighted material to train its image-generation model, Stable Diffusion.

Getty, the US-based company that licenses stock photos and videos, sued Stability AI claiming it had improperly used Getty’s images to train Stable Diffusion, the AI tool that generates images from text prompts.

In a judgment handed down yesterday (4 November), the court largely sided with Stability AI with one narrow exception - trademark infringement which the court accepted on limited terms as some AI-generated images included Getty watermarks.

On the rest of the claims, including the crucial question of secondary copyright infringement, Getty came up short.

Copyright and jurisdiction

Getty, represented by Fieldfisher, had already dropped the core copyright part of its claim during the trial in June - chiefly because it could not establish a strong enough jurisdictional link between the UK and the training of Stability AI’s model, which took place abroad.

Getty, however, continued to pursue claims of secondary copyright infringement, arguing that Stability AI had effectively imported a system into the UK that breached its copyright.

Legal implications

Alex Shandro, partner in the AI group at A&O Shearman, said the ruling provides important clarity for developers. "The main takeaway is that AI models trained outside the UK, which don’t store or reproduce copyright works, are not exposed to UK copyright when deployed in the UK," he said.

"This has implications for accountability along the AI value chain and will be of some comfort to application developers operating in the UK, who often build on top of AI foundation models trained outside the UK."

Getty’s reaction

Getty said it had invested "millions of pounds" on the case and remains "deeply concerned that even well-resourced companies face significant challenges in protecting their creative works given the lack of transparency requirements."

Getty is taking the small win on trademark infringement and said in a statement: "We will be taking forward findings of fact from the UK ruling in our US case."

Claire Robinson, a counsel at IP specialist Powell Gilbert, noted that decision will be disappointing for Getty, adding: "The case has been hard fought and given its importance to the creative community it will be interesting to see if Getty chooses to appeal."

Advising

Bird & Bird acted for Stability AI with a team led by partners Toby Bond and Nick Aries.

Fieldfisher acted for Getty. The team was led by partners Nick Rose and Tommy McKenna.