The USPTO recently released the report “Public Views on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Policy”. The report is part of the USPTO’s effort to engage with the innovation community and experts on AI and to promote innovation of AI through appropriate intellectual property incentives. The report includes the analysis of nearly 200 responses received from individuals and organizations to federal notices published in August and October 2019 to solicit public comments on patenting AI…

Thomson Reuters’ The Daily Docket interviewed Cecillia Xie about her popular TikToks, where she mentors followers and helps them navigate law school and legal careers. “What I want to encourage young attorneys to do is take a step back from the environment of law school and think about what really makes them happy and what practices would make their career rewarding,” Cecillia said. Read the full article.…

SUMMARY On June 7, 2019, the highly controversial EU Copyright Directive (“Directive”) came into force, requiring EU Member States to transpose its provisions into national law by June 7, 2021. To recap, the most relevant provisions of the Directive require the implementation of the following rules into national law: Online content-sharing service providers’ liability for copyright-infringing content, Article 17 Online content-sharing services are subject to direct liability for copyright-infringing content uploaded by their users if…

A federal district court judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., dismissed the complaint in a case filed by Genius, a platform that lets users share and annotate lyrics, holding that the plaintiff’s claims were preempted by copyright law. The suit alleged that Google had stolen from Genius transcriptions of song lyrics, and included those song lyrics in Google’s website boxes when Google users search for a song. Such actions, Genius alleged, amounted to “unfair and anticompetitive…

In Elliott v. Donegan, a federal district court in New York held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not warrant the dismissal of a defamation claim where the plaintiff’s complaint did not “foreclose[] the possibility that Defendant created or developed the allegedly unlawful content.” The content at issue was a “publicly accessible, shared Google spreadsheet” titled “Shitty Media Men” that the defendant Moira Donegan had started containing a list of men…

It is another win for social media platforms in the realm of the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230. In a case of first impression within the Third Circuit, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Hepp v. Facebook ruled that social media platforms are immune under the Communications Decency Act for right of publicity violations under state law by users of such platforms. Karen Hepp, a television news anchor for FOX 29 News, filed a complaint…

Expressing concern about the spread of disinformation related to COVID-19, Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra said Congress may need “to reassess the special privileges afforded to tech platforms, especially given their vast power to curate and present content in ways that may manipulate users.” His words implicate one of our favorite topics here at Socially Aware: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects websites from liability for content posted by third…