Top Noteworthy Copyright Stories from August 2025
In August, there were many developments in the courts with copyright cases, including settlements in two AI lawsuits. There were many more significant copyright-related events in August. Here is a quick snapshot of the top copyright news stories from August 2025.
Court Denies Former Register of Copyright’s Emergency Motion for Injunction Pending Appeal
On August 20, the district court for the District of Columbia denied former Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter’s emergency motion for injunction pending appeal in her lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its firing of Perlmutter from the Register of Copyright position. The court stated that Perlmutter had not shown irreparable harm absent the grant of an injunction, reiterating its position that temporary loss of a “statutory right to function” does not meet the standards required for the court to issue the injunction.
Multiple Japanese News Publishers Sue Perplexity
On August 7, Japanese daily news publisher, Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, announced that it sued Perplexity, alleging that the AI company used approximately 120,000 of the news publisher’s articles without a license from February to June of this year to train Perplexity’s AI products. Yomiuri filed the complaint in the Tokyo District Court and is seeking compensation of more than 2.1 billion yen, or roughly $14.2 million USD. On August 26, major Japanese news publishers Nikkei and The Asahi Shimbun Company also launched a lawsuit against AI company, Perplexity in Tokyo District Court, over the unauthorized scraping of the publishers’ articles in response to queries by Perplexity’s users. The complaint details that Perplexity ignored crawler-prevention protocols like robots.txt. The publishers are seeking an injunction to prevent the reproduction and transmission of the articles, to delete stored articles and damages of ¥2.2 billion ($15 million) per media firm. More information is available in the publishers’ press release.
Music Publisher Plaintiffs Request to Amend Lawsuit in Light of Evidence of Anthropic’s Failure to Disclose Torrenting Activities
On August 11, music publisher plaintiffs in the Concord v. Anthropic case filed motions to amend their complaint and modify the scheduling order in an effort to address new evidence stating that Anthropic used BitTorrent to illegally download and simultaneously upload copies of many lyric and sheet music anthologies containing publishers’ works. The plaintiffs note that after more than a year of discovery in the case, they were not aware of Anthropic’s “infamous BitTorrent protocol,” and that they became aware of it only through the Bartz v. Anthropic case.
Ninth Circuit Holds DMCA Subpoena Process Does Not Apply to ISPs Providing Conduit Services
On August 15, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling in In Re: Subpoena of Internet Subscribers of Cox Communications, LLC and CoxCom LLC that Internet Service Provider (ISP), Cox Communications was not subject to the subpoena provision under Section 512(h) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) because it only provided conduit services under Section 512(a). Capstone Studios Corporation had sought to subpoena Cox to obtain the identities of 29 Cox subscribers whose IP addresses were tracked pirating copies of Capstone’s movie, Fall. The Ninth Circuit agreed that because Cox was only providing transmission services subject to Section 512(a) of the DMCA and could not participate in a DMCA notice and takedown process, it was also not subject to the Section 512(h) subpoena process since the process requires that the subpoenaed service provider have received the original DMCA takedown notice. Separately, the court also rejected Capstone’s argument that because an IP address of a user functions as a link and reference to that user to all locations on the Internet, Cox’s services qualified it as a service provider under Section 512(d) (which would subject Cox to the subpoena process), stating that if the court accepted Capstone’s argument, “then the § 512(d) safe harbor would completely swallow the § 512(a) safe harbor.”
BMI and ASCAP Reach Settlement with Radio Music License Committee
On August 19, BMI and ASCAP announced that they had reached separate settlements with the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC). BMI’s settlement agreement included a “historic rate increase” for royalties generated for the 2022-2029 period of up to 2.20% for 2026-2029. ASCAP’s settlement agreement with RMLC also included higher royalty rates with year-over-year increases.
Parties Settle in Voice Actors’ AI Lawsuit
On August 20, the district court for the District of Delaware issued an order to stay proceedings in Vacker v. Eleven Labs, a lawsuit brought by a group of voice actors against AI company Eleven Labs for allegedly using the plaintiffs’ voice recordings in audio books to train its AI models. The stay was issued due to the parties reaching a settlement agreement. The long-form agreement will be finalized and signed by September 17.
Visual Artist Files Motion for Summary Judgment in Registration Refusal Case Over AI-Assisted Image
On August 25, visual artist, Jason Allen, filed a motion for summary judgment in his case against the U.S. Copyright Office over its refusal to register a Midjourney-assisted artwork Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. Allen argued that under the standards for authorship under the Supreme Court precedent, his “sophisticated use of prompts” to Midjourney constitutes original human authorship in the generated image and that the Copyright Office’s refusal to register Allen’s work was contradictory to its own policies.
Parties Settle in Bartz v. Anthropic AI Case
On August 26, parties in the authors’ class action AI lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic filed a notice of settlement after mediation, staying discovery and further proceedings in the case as they work to finalize the settlement agreement. On June 24, the court had issued an order on summary judgment, finding that “the use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act” but also that “[c]reating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic’s piracy.” Additionally, the issue of Anthropic’s use of pirated copies to create Anthropic’s central library and the resulting damages, actual or statutory (including for willfulness)” had been heading towards trial.
Copyright Events and Deadlines in September
Artist Rights Roundtable on AI and Copyright
On September 18 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET, the Kogod School of Business at American University in Washington, DC, and the Artist Rights Institute will host their annual Artist Rights Symposium. The symposium will gather leaders in the tech and entertainment industries, along with leaders in policy and government, to address issues related to the rights of recording artists. This year’s event will focus on topics related to artificial intelligence, such as AI provenance and licensing, current AI litigation, and U.S. and international AI legislation. More information is available on the registration page.
Authors Guild WIT Literary Festival
From September 25-28, the Authors Guild Foundation will once again host the Words, Ideas, and Thinkers (WIT) Festival to explore the theme of The Power of Words: Authors & Activism. The 2025 festival will feature a lineup of conversations and panels with novelists, playwrights, journalists, translators, poets, critics, historians, and essayists. Additional information, including speakers and panel topics, and to purchase tickets to attend is available on the registration page.
USCO Webinar on Copyright Public Records System
On September 25 at 1 p.m. ET, the U.S. Copyright Office will host a webinar titled Conducting Public Records Searches Using the Copyright Public Records System featuring Denise Wofford, Assistant Register and Director, Office of Copyright Records, U.S. Copyright Office, and Shawn Gallagher, Management and Program Analyst, Office of Copyright Records, U.S. Copyright Office as speakers. The webinar, which is the third in a series focused on helping users understand how to search the Copyright Public Records System (CPRS), will cover updated features of CPRS, various search scenarios, and answer frequently asked questions. There will be a question and answer period during the webinar as well. More information is available on the registration page.
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