Source: PetaPixel

A U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania rejected defenses advanced by The Sterling Group of the Twin Tiers, Inc. in a one-count copyright complaint brought by commercial photographer Nick Vedros over unauthorized use of his photograph. Vedros alleges the image, created for a dog food advertising campaign, was originally published in 2007 and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office on April 22, 2014, and that it was displayed in full without credit in a 2016 blog post attached to the defendant’s commercial English Labrador puppy-selling business; the post had 43 views before the image was removed. Both parties sought summary judgment; the court found the defendant reproduced the photograph exactly, did not transform it, and failed the four statutory fair-use factors (purpose, nature, amount, market effect).

The defendant also argued that a similar photograph “could have” been produced using artificial intelligence and asked the court to hold that works potentially generable by AI lack copyright protection. Chief Judge Matthew W. Brann characterized that argument as legally unsupported, stating the Court declines to rule that copyright does not protect works which could have been generated with AI because such a holding would destroy the foundations of copyright law. The court ruled for the plaintiff on the defenses and left liability and any damages to be determined later, noting that significant damages are unlikely given the low view count before removal.