For more than a decade, athletes and governing bodies have struggled with the legal complexities of using copyrighted music in figure skating competitions. The recent controversy involving Olympic figure skater Petr Gumennik is simply the latest example of how...
Copyrights
Federal Court Says Salt-N-Pepa’s Music Was Never Theirs
In early January, a federal court dismissed a high-profile lawsuit filed by legendary hip-hop duo Salt-N-Pepa against Universal Music Group (UMG). The artists had sought to reclaim ownership of their early master recordings under federal copyright law. The judge ruled...
Authors Hit Salesforce Copyright Class Action for Training AI on “Shadow Library” Data
A few months back, a group of authors filed a class action lawsuit against Salesforce in federal court in the Northern District of California, alleging that the company used pirated copies of copyrighted books to train its large language models and power commercial AI...
Why Disney Told Google to Stop Using Its IP While Making a Deal with OpenAI
This one was so big that you may have already heard about it even if you do not have your ear to the ground for IP news. In December 2025, The Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google alleging unauthorized use of Disney’s copyrighted works in...
Media Alliance Claims Protections Aren’t Barriers to AI Development
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape commerce, media, and technology, policymakers face a familiar but difficult question: how to encourage innovation without eroding the legal frameworks that made that innovation possible in the first place. A recent...
After Dismissal, Artist Files 2nd Amended Complaint against Taylor Swift
When individuals hear a celebrity is being sued over song lyrics, it can sound like tabloid fodder – something not to be taken very seriously. And it is true that Kimberly Marasco’s 2024 complaint alleging that Swift and her collaborators used elements of her poetry...
Jared Goff Is a Detroit Lion – That Doesn’t Mean They Can Use Any Pictures of Him They Want
Recently, photographer Dennis Lee filed suit against the Detroit Lions claiming the NFL team used Lee’s high school sports images of quarterback Jared Goff without proper licensing. The photographs in dispute date from 2011 and 2012 and depict Goff playing baseball...
The Hollywood Assault on AI Continues to Grow with Suit against MiniMax
Back in July, we told you about the lawsuit Disney and Universal filed against Midjourney, alleging unlawful use of copyrighted images owned by those entertainment companies. At the time, we asked whether it might be a turning point for AI as the first big instance of...