Detecting and Prosecuting IP Infringement with AI: Can the AI Genie Repulse the Forty Counterfeit Thieves of Alibaba?

Abstract

Drawing from available quantitative and qualitative data, this chapter briefly identifies and describes the automated as well as the more sophisticated AI-driven systems deployed to detect and enforce IPR infringement by trademark and copyright holders in the online environment. It studies the legal basis for the use of such automated systems in copyright and trademark laws, and examines how such automated systems have upended, refocused and altered many of the issues of IPR infringement and their enforcement. This chapter will also look at the problems of non-compliant Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notices, opportunistic copyright trolls, and non-interventionist Internet intermediaries, review the relevant judicial and legislative treatments including those in the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, and propose possible solutions to these problems.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Intermediary Liability, Intellectual Property Infringement, Copyright, Trademarks, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, Take-Down Notices