 |
Cheese, high heels, and AI scrapers:
this Kat scrutinises the week's diverse docket. |
Book Review
Wissam Bentazar provided an immersive review of the new book Fashion and Intellectual Property. The volume explores fashion as a complex cultural system, examining how IP law interacts with everything from luxury goods and upcycling to cultural appropriation and the functionality of garments.
Copyright
Georgia Jenkins delved into the escalating war over data access for AI. She examined Google’s lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping search result pages (SERPs), highlighting Google's strategic pivot to relying on technological protection measures (TPMs) to control access to its infrastructure and data, a move paralleling the Reddit v. Perplexity litigation.
Oliver Fairhurst updated us on the ongoing saga of Getty Images v Stability AI. Permission to appeal has been granted on the critical issue of secondary copyright infringement—specifically whether Stable Diffusion constitutes an "infringing copy"—and Stability will seek permission from the Court of Appeal regarding the adverse trade mark findings.
Designs
Kliment Markov
walked us through the CJEU’s judgment in Deity Shoes (
C-323/24). The Court confirmed that EU design law does not require "
genuine design activity" or intellectual effort, aligning with Cofemel, and ruled that following fashion trends does not necessarily diminish a designer's freedom in the assessment of individual character.
