Barry Sookman

Copyright Year in Review Canada: My ALAI Presentation

Barry Sookman — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:30:44 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to present to ALAI my copyright developments over the past year. The presentation was accompanied by a detailed paper that canvasses the most important Canadian (and selected international) decisions shaping copyright law in 2025–2026.

The presentation walked through the major areas of copyright law where courts have been particularly active, including:

How courts are interpreting the Copyright Act
Ownership and standing issues
Copyright in the employment and commercial context
Infringement and liability in a digital world
Territoriality and cross-border conduct
Remedies and enforcement
Emerging issues including AI related issues

For anyone following developments in copyright law—or dealing with these issues in practice—the cases this year provide important guidance and, in some areas, signal where the law may be heading next.…

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AI Ethics: Court Overturns Arbitration Decision

Barry Sookman — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:35:56 +0000

In a bombshell of a case, a Quebec Court recently overturned an arbitration decision based on the arbitrator’s use of generative artificial intelligence in writing reasons for decision. The decision in Association des ressources intermédiaires d’hébergement du Québec (ARIHQ) c. Santé Québec – Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, 2026 QCCS 1360 was premised on the principle that when parties select an arbitrator to hear a dispute they are entitled to expect the arbitrator to make the decision.…

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Cox v Sony: Analyzing the Supreme Court Decision

Barry Sookman — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:09:57 +0000

The U.S. Supreme Court released an important decision on the scope of U.S. secondary liability for copyright infringement applied to ISPs in Cox Communications, Inc. et al. v. Sony Music Entertainment et al., 607 U.S. ——- S.Ct. —-2026 WL 815823. The syllabus of the court summarized the case and the court’s opinion are set out below. My comments on the case follows the summary of the Cox v Sony opinion of the SCOTUS.

Cox v Sony case summary

Under the Copyright Act, “[a]nyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner … is an infringer of the copyright.”

…

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Quebec IT Framework Act Decision Impact on Search Engines

Barry Sookman — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:35:44 +0000

In A.B. c. Google, 2026 QCCA 157, the Quebec Court of Appeal held that Google could incur liability under Quebec’s Act to establish a legal framework for information technology (the “IT Framework Act”) for refusing to de-index hyperlinks to defamatory content after acquiring knowledge of its unlawful character. The Court distinguished the Supreme Court’s decision in Crookes v. Newton, interpreted section 22 of the IT Framework Act as imposing obligations on intermediaries once they become aware of unlawful activity, and upheld a de-indexing injunction limited to Quebec.…

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Copyright in AI Prompts: Chinese Court Ruling on Generative AI and Originality

Barry Sookman — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:17:59 +0000

The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence has raised fundamental questions about whether prompts used to instruct AI systems can attract copyright protection. Courts worldwide are now beginning to address a variety of questions related to AI and copyright and have started to examine whether AI prompts constitute original works or merely unprotectable ideas or other subject matter. A recent case, Chengdu Cultural Communication Co., Ltd v Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. 2025) Hu 0101 Min Chu No. 14775 (November 6, 2025),[i] examined this question in considering whether copyright is capable of subsisting in prompts submitted to an image generative artificial intelligence system (a “GenAI system”).…

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OSFI E-23 Guideline and Its Impact on Financial Institutions

Barry Sookman — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:22:58 +0000

Introduction

The regulatory landscape related to artificial intelligence continues to evolve. For regulated entities like Canadian banks and insurance companies and their foreign affiliates, for federally regulated credit unions, and for Canadian affiliates of foreign banks and insurance operating in Canada (“FIs”), OSFI Guideline E-23 – Model Risk Management (2027), which will come into force on May 1, 2027 (“Guideline E-23”), adds a new layer of regulatory and contracting complexity.

Contracts between service providers and FIs are already complicated because of the requirements of FIs to comply with Canadian privacy laws such as PIPEDA and privacy laws in other jurisdictions in which they operate, regulatory guidelines such as OSFI’s updated B-10 Third-Party Risk Management Guideline, OSFI’s Technology and Cyber Security Incident Reporting Advisory, and other guidance.…

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2025 Year in Review: What You (and the Algorithms) Loved Most

Barry Sookman — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:07:36 +0000

Intro (AI & human readers)

This year-in-review highlights the blog posts on barrysookman.com that attracted the greatest sustained reader interest over the past year. Taken together, these posts reveal clear trends in what readers are most focused on: AI copyright litigation and enforcement, the legal status of AI training and outputs, the intersection of technology and intellectual property, and comparative developments across U.S., UK, Canadian, and EU law. Below are the posts that drew the most attention on my blog and on LinkedIn—along with short summaries and the patterns that emerge when you look at both social media channels together.…

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Ziff Davis v OpenAI: Key Copyright Litigation Ruling

Barry Sookman — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:46:43 +0000

In a recent decision, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litig., 2025 WL 3635559 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 15, 2025) District Court Judge Stein ruled, for the first time in AI copyright litigation, that crawling a website in violation of a robots.txs website code does not infringe the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The New York court also confirmed in a pleadings motion ruling that tenable claims (claims that can survive a pleading motion) can be made out by alleging copyright infringement in AI generated outputs, DMCA claims for intentional removal of copyright management information (CMI), and trademark dilution claims for using famous marks in generated AI output that does not contain content of the trademark owner.…

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Getty v Stability AI: Exclusive Copyright Licences and Clickwrap Signatures

Barry Sookman — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 13:38:46 +0000

In the prior blog posts, Copyright Infringement and AI: Insights from Getty v StabiliyAI Trademark Infringement and AI: the Getty and Cohere cases, I summarized the landmark decision in Getty Images (US) Inc v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), as it related to Stability AI’s liability for secondary copyright infringement and trademark infringement. But, the U.K. court’s decision in Getty also dealt with two other important issues related to Getty’s status to sue for copyright infringement. The first was that Getty’s licences that purposed to be exclusive under New York law did not give Getty the status to sue under the UK copyright law, the CDPA.…

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OpenAI Toronto Star jurisdiction decision

Barry Sookman — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 14:12:09 +0000

An Ontario court just released an important decision refusing to dismiss a copyright, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract claims brought by the Toronto Star and other newspaper publishers against OpenAI for lack of jurisdiction. In Toronto Star Newspapers Limited v. OpenAI Inc., 2025 ONSC 6217, Justice Kimmel held that the Ontario court had subject matter jurisdiction over the claims in the proceeding and personal jurisdiction over some of the operating companies of one of the leading U.S. based generative AI companies, OpenAI.…

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