Mason Rothschild created an NFT project called MetaBirkins in which each of 100 NFTs depicts one of Hermès’ famous Birkin handbags. Hermès sells those handbags for thousands of dollars and owns trademarks in the handbag’s name and trade dress. Hermès sued Rothschild for trademark infringement and related claims.

The plaintiffs filed suit against generative-AI companies Stability AI (creator of Stable Diffusion), Midjourney (creator of Midjourney), DeviantArt (creator of DreamUp), and Runway AI (involved in creating Stable Diffusion) for copyright infringement, DMCA violations, and related state law claims. They allege that the defendants used their (and other artists’) works to train AI without obtaining their permission. According to the plaintiffs, when the defendants’ AI tools create a “new” work, they are actually creating an infringing derivative work. The plaintiffs seek to bring their suit as a class action on behalf of everyone in the U.S. that owns a copyright in any work that was used to train any version of the AI tools.

The New York Times filed suit against Open AI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, vicarious and contributory copyright infringement, violations of the DMCA, common law unfair competition, and trademark dilution. It alleges that the defendants unlawfully copied The Times’ content via their generative AI products like ChatGPT and Copilot. These generative AIs rely on large-language models (LLMs) that, The Times alleges, were built by copying millions of its copyrighted articles.

Yuga Labs is the creator behind the most well-known NFT project to date: the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 NFTs of apes in various costumes and poses. Ryder Ripps, an artist, alleged that the team behind Yuga had neo-Nazi sympathies, and he created a mirror image of the BAYC NFTs called RR/BAYC, which Ripps described as “a protest against and a parody of” BAYC. Yuga sued Ripps and his business partner Jeremy Cahen for trademark infringement and related claims.

According to the complaint, Taylor Whitley co-created an NFT collection called Caked Apes, which incorporated some of Whitley’s IP. Whitley and the defendants agreed to split the revenue from sales of the collection, which was around $1.9 million in primary sales and $225,000 in secondary sales. The partnership quickly devolved. The defendants allegedly locked Whitley out of the community (Discord server and social media accounts) and failed to pay him some proceeds from the NFT sales. Whitley sued for copyright infringement, negligent misrepresentation, breach of implied contract, defamation, and other claims.

True Returns owns a patent that purportedly addresses “computational, time, storage, and security constraints inherent to distributed ledgers (such as blockchains)” by “separat[ing] certain processing and storage functions from a base distributed computerized ledger (such as a blockchain) but link[ing] such separated processing and storage to the base distributed computerized ledger.” MakerDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that issues the Dai stablecoin and whose governance rights are represented by MKR tokens. True Returns accuses MakerDAO of infringing its patent.

Stephen Thaler developed an AI system that created a digital artwork without any human input. The Copyright Office refused to register a copyright in the work because it lacked any human input. Thaler sued Shira Perlmutter in her official capacity as the Director of the Copyright Office, asking the court to force the Copyright Office to register a copyright in the work.

In 2017, Luna Aura (real name Angela Anne Flores) co-authored “Walk Away,” a song featured in 3LAU’s (real name Justin Blau) album Ultraviolet. Per the terms of their 2017 agreement, 3LAU was granted rights in the master recording, and Luna Aura was granted a royalty. In February 2021, 3LAU released Ultraviolet as a series of NFTs and generated more than $11 million in initial sales, but Luna Aura allegedly received no royalties from those sales. Aura sued 3LAU for breach of contract, unfair competition, an an accounting.

This is the second major copyright infringement suit filed against generative-AI company Stability AI (creator of Stable Diffusion). Getty’s complaint is for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition, trademark dilution, DMCA violations, and related state law claims. Getty alleges that Stability AI is building a competing business using Getty’s images without permission. It listed 7,216 of its copyrighted images in the complaint, a subset of the millions it’s alleging Stability AI is infringing. Getty also alleges that its famous watermark is on some Stability AI output images, confusing users into believing the images originated with Getty, and that Stability AI violated the DMCA by trying to remove it.

StockX sells NFTs that represent ownership of physical goods (like sneakers) that are stored in StockX’s “vault.” StockX minted and sold NFTs of shoes having Nike’s famous trademarks which represent ownership of Nike shoes in its vault. Nike sued StockX for trademark infringement and related claims.

Playboy sued the people behind the websites www.playboyrabbitars.app and www.playboyrabbit.com for selling counterfeit copies of Playboy’s Rabbitars, a collection of 11,953 NFTs inspired by Playboy’s most famous iconography, art, photography, and celebrities. Playboy brought claims for federal trademark infringement and trademark infringement and unfair competition under New York law.

Quentin Tarantino, one of the most celebrated film directors of modern times, announced plans to auction seven “exclusive scenes” from the 1994 hit Pulp Fiction as NFTs. Miramax sued Tarantino for breach contract, copyright and trademark infringement, and unfair competition, claiming that it held all the rights in the film except for a narrow sliver of “Reserved Rights” held by Tarantino, which didn’t include minting and selling Pulp Fiction NFTs.