The High Court has granted Getty Images (Getty) permission to appeal the recent landmark ruling that rejected its claims of secondary copyright infringement against Stability AI.

We commented on the judgment in detail here. Whilst it left unaddressed the crucial question of whether the training of AI models on copyright works (and the models’ outputs) constitutes copyright infringement under UK law, the ruling nonetheless provided important consideration of whether a claim for secondary copyright infringement under sections 22 and 23 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) might offer an alternative route where a primary infringement claim is unavailable due to, among other things (as in this case), jurisdictional obstacles.

Having considered the matter in considerable detail, the Court ultimately found that secondary copyright infringement had not taken place. However, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith acknowledged that the case raised “novel issues of law”.

It is therefore unsurprising that she has granted Getty permission to appeal on the issue of secondary infringement. As she explained, the issue not only “concerns a pure question of law, namely a matter of statutory construction on which the minds of reasonable lawyers may differ”, but it also concerns “how the provisions of the CDPA should be construed (and specifically the phrase “infringing copy”) in the context of an AI model [which] has potentially far-reaching ramifications for AI models and intangible articles such as software more generally”.

Separately, Stability AI had sought permission to appeal the High Court’s ruling that it had infringed Getty’s trade marks. However, permission was not granted.

To read the judgment in full, click here.