Designs and Copyright Review of the Year

Introduction

2023 will no doubt be remembered as the year of the generative AI boom, so it is no surprise we are already seeing the fallout in the form of copyright claims.

What started with the quite sudden release and rise of the large language model, ChatGPT, in late 2022, has led to the development of a plethora of AI technologies and systems capable of generating a whole host of content, including music, images and video, all based on the training inputs and the particular prompts given to the AI model. Predictably this has led to numerous copyright-related concerns about both the rights in the input-content used to train these systems and the subsequent output-content generated.

In design cases, the courts were a little quieter in 2023. The EU courts dealt with a number of queries about component parts for “complex products” from bicycle saddles to electrode components and welding torches. The key questions focused on what amounts to “visibility” of those component parts during “normal use” of the product. Meanwhile the English courts dealt with run-of-the-mill infringement cases in respect of gin bottles, cargo pants and wearable breast pumps.