Court rejects Getty Images’ core claim in historic case against AI image generator
The High Court dismissed Getty Images’ core intellectual property claims against an AI image generator, but also granted it limited historic success in a landmark UK lawsuit.
US giant Getty Images sued UK-based AI image generator Stability AI, alleging it unlawfully copied and processed millions of copyrighted images to train its image generation technology.
The case was centred around Stable Diffusion, a tool owned by Stability AI, which automatically generates images based on text or image prompts.
Getty Images alleged that its intellectual property rights have been infringed by Stability’s tool, claiming that its copyrighted images were used in the training of Stable Diffusion.
The case, which was heard at the High Court in June, saw Getty Images drop one of its claims over primary copyright infringement just two weeks into the trial.
The arguments that remained before Mrs Justice Joanna Smith were Getty Images’ secondary infringement claim, along with trademark infringement and passing off.
On Tuesday, the court handed down a 205-page ruling, the court ruled that Getty Images was successful in part of its trademark infringement claim, but this success was limited to older models and was based on isolated examples.
Legal sector reacts
However, the court dismissed Getty Images’ central claim of secondary copyright infringement under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The court found that although an “article” may be an intangible object for the purposes of the Act, an AI model such as Stable Diffusion is not an “infringing copy”, such that there is no infringement under the Act.
The judge also dismissed its other copyright claims, which were based on primary copyright infringement; however, this claim had already been abandoned by Getty during the trial.
Robert Guthrie, partner in the IP Disputes Practice at Osborne Clarke, stated: “This judgment is a big win for Stability AI and AI developers generally.”
“Although the judgment is a big win for Stability AI and AI developers generally, it is worth flagging that it did not decide whether the use of third-party copyright-protected works in the training or refinement of AI models infringes copyright in the UK, as Getty was unable to establish that any such training had taken place in the UK,” he added.
Rebecca Newman, legal director at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said: “Despite the protection UK copyright purports to offer, Stability has got away with exploiting authorial works for their huge value in training model weights.
“Today’s finding means that copyright owners’ exclusive right to reap what they have sown has been avoided on a technicality. In practice, models trained on infringing data outside of the UK can be imported into the UK without legal repercussions,” she added.
Guthrie added, “Attention now turns to the government’s consultation on AI and copyright, which is considering whether the current law should be amended.
“This judgment will undoubtedly be seized on by copyright owners as evidence that the current law needs strengthening in their favour and by AI developers as evidence that their use of copyright works is legitimate.”
Nick Buckland, partner at Lewis Silkin, noted: “This is not necessarily carte blanche for AI models to be trained on copyright works; if training does take place in the UK, then there are fundamental questions to be answered, and the court found that in some cases replicating watermarks on images can amount to trade mark infringement.”
While Nick Eziefula, partner at Simkins, added: “This case underscores a growing gap between old copyright law and new technology. The creative sector is now looking to lawmakers – and future court battles – to deliver clearer answers and fairer frameworks for ethical, transparent AI innovation.”