The judge ruled that Stability AI infringed Getty’s trademark but not its copyright
Artificial intelligence company Stability AI and Getty Images both declared victory in a copyright and trademark infringement case in UK High Court, reported the Associated Press.
Getty Images had sued Stability AI on primary and secondary copyright infringement grounds for using 12 million of its images to train the image generator Stable Diffusion. According to Getty, Stability AI had scraped the images from Getty’s site without its consent.
Getty also claimed trademark infringement as some images produced by Stability AI’s chatbot included the Getty watermark.
London-based Stability AI argued that the UK did not have jurisdiction over the case because its AI models were trained on computers operated by Amazon in the US. Getty dropped the primary copyright infringement claims during a three-week trial held in June, but maintained the secondary infringement allegations because UK residents could access Stable Diffusion.
Justice Joanna Smith ruled that Getty won on the trademark infringement claim – however, Stability AI did not infringe Getty’s copyright given that Stable Diffusion did not retain or reproduce copyrighted materials. She described her findings in the case as being “both historic and extremely limited in scope,” in a snippet of the ruling published by AP News.
“While I have found instances of trademark infringement, I have been unable to determine that these were widespread,” Smith wrote in a statement published by AP News.
Getty said in a statement published by AP News that Smith’s decision marked “a significant win for intellectual property owners.” Meanwhile, Stability AI general counsel Christian Dowell said in a statement published by AP News that the final ruling “ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue.”
A Getty spokeswoman did not comment on whether the company would appeal the decision, according to AP News. Getty also filed a suit against Stability AI in San Francisco federal court last August.
