The Foundry Law Blog

Is it Plagiarism to Use Chat GPT or Other AI Language Models?

The short answer is that it depends on what type of content you’re using the models to generate and whether you properly acknowledge the original source of your content.  In general, plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own without giving proper credit. Given this definition, there may be […]

What Does “Human” Element Mean as it Applies to Copyright?

The U.S. Copyright Office will only register a work of authorship if that work is “eligible” for copyright protection. The “human” element to copyright is essentially one element for copyright eligibility. In short, the element requires that a work of authorship be created by a human being before it can be copyrighted. The Copyright Office […]

Web Scraping: Pitfalls and Proactive Best Practices

If your business relies on insights from reviews, comments or other aggregated data, chances are that you are tempted to engage in a little (or a lot of) web scraping. Web scraping is essentially conducting automatic data extraction from one website, for use by a different party. It’s sometimes referred to as “web harvesting” or […]

Can you Keep a (Trade) Secret? The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016

Before May 11, 2016, only three out of four forms of intellectual property – patents, trademarks and copyrights – were protectable and enforceable at the federal level. The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA) now provides federal protection for – you guessed it – trade secrets. Prior to the DTSA, trade secrets were enforced […]

Who wore it better? The grey area of copyright in the world of fashion design and imitations.

Trends in fashion tend to spread like wildfire amongst both retailers and consumers. Clothing companies endeavor to keep up with current styles and popular trends to market to customers, resulting in various products stemming from one “design.” When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, her wedding dress was immediately replicated by various fashion houses […]

Copyright & Copywrong: What are Derivative and Transformative Works?

Recently, we’ve been asked several times about the nature of a certain work as it relates to copyright infringement.   “Is my work a derivative of theirs? I should be fine, right?” “Sure, I incorporate some of their copyrighted work, but mine is transformative enough, so I’m good, right?”   As with most gray areas, […]