Friday Fantasies

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Friday Fantasies

 Söğüt Atilla-Aydın Friday, December 19, 2025 - Artificial Intelligence, copyright, IP News, Miscellany, opportunities, Söğüt Atilla-Aydın, trade marks

With the final countdowns to Christmas and the New Year’s, some readers may already have started enjoying the Holiday season. However, The IPKat is, as always, working hard to keep its beloved readers up to date with exciting opportunities and the recent news in the IP world!

Opportunities

AI Regulation Early-Career Researchers Conference 2026

A Kat not taking a break from hunting mrrvelous opportunities and IP news!

For the attention of early-career researchers! CREATe is holding a conference on AI regulation, exploring how AI shapes and is shaped by labour law, privacy and data protection law, consumer protection law, platform regulation, and intellectual property law. Early career researchers are invited to submit papers to be presented at the conference between 31 March and 1 April 2026, at the University of Glasgow. The deadline for submitting abstracts is 19 January 2026. The programme of the conference and further details on submissions can be found here.

Call for submissions to WIPO Magazine on Sports and IP

WIPO Magazine launched a call for pitches for its next special issue which will explore the diverse intellectual property issues that affect the world of sports. The essays can be on any topic covering creativity and innovation that shape sports, as well as the emerging challenges in the sports industry and athletes’ lives from an IP perspective. The deadline to submit the pitches and the drafts are 2 February 2026 and 16 March 2026, respectively. For further information see here.

News

The Thirteenth Edition of the Nice Classification

Last week, WIPO announced that the 13th edition of the Nice Classification, which will reclassify some goods and services, will take effect on 1 January 2026 – yet another countdown!

Working Paper on Generative AI and Copyright

Having formed a committee earlier this year, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India recently released its Working Paper on Generative AI and Copyright – Part 1. The Working Paper, citing two recent papers (this and this) of our PermaKat Eleonora Rosati, addresses the issues arising from the use of copyright works in the training of generative AI tools and suggests that any lawfully accessed copyright work should remain available for AI training but, as a compromise, copyright holders need to be compensated for the unauthorised use of their works. This “Hybrid Model”, argues the Committee, is a promising approach to AI training because of being able to offer the much-needed balanced approach to AI innovation and human creativity. Part 2 of the Paper will focus on the copyrightability and authorship of AI-generated works, whether moral rights can be applicable to such works, and ascertaining the liable party in cases of copyright infringement.

Copyright and AI statement of progress under Section 137 Data (Use and Access) Act

Having received over 11,500 responses to its Copyright and AI Consultation which ran between 17 December 2024 and 25 February 2025, on Monday the UKIPO published a progress report, briefly summarising the key findings from the responses it received. According to the report creators, AI developers, researchers, cultural heritage organisations, legal professionals, and interested individuals submitted responses, 88% of which emphasised the importance of obtaining licences from creators prior to any AI training in all cases (i.e., Option 1). Given this significant pressure on obtaining licences, the report stated that it is now seeking ways to facilitate UK copyright’s licencing framework to make it accessible and operable for all. Remaining 12% of the responses were divided as follows: 7% argued for doing nothing and keeping the law as it is (i.e., Option 0), 3% called for the introduction of a TDM exception with rights reservation option (i.e., Option 3), 0.5% insisted on the introduction of a broad TDM exception with no such constraint (i.e., Option 2), and 1.5% did not indicate a preference of one of the options.

The Consultation firmly and repeatedly stated that the UK must remain a world leader in the creative industries while becoming a global hub for AI training. However, the UKIPO now appears to slightly favour ensuring that creative incentives are protected over unlicensed AI development.

This Kat was particularly struck by the fact that 88% of the submissions advocated for a strengthened licensing regime, despite the inherent difficulties in identifying all rightsholders and the significant transaction costs involved. Although the report does mention that they are seeking ways to facilitate the process and make it more straightforward, a significant issue remains: it is still highly likely that large AI companies will continue to ignore obtaining licences from smaller, less known, but more vulnerable creators and simply take the unlikely risk of being sued by them. This may cause the UK to establish new and stricter licencing requirements only for them to be neglected in practice by AI companies.

The progress report states that the full an economic impact assessment and a report on the use of copyright works in the development of AI systems will be prepared and published by 18 March 2026. Stay tuned!

Image credit: Gemini

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