AI and the Right to Research: CIPIL Spring Conference 2025

Speaker: Professor Sean Flynn (Washington College of Law)

Session 3: AI Transforming the Scope of Protection and Enforcement

On Saturday 29th March 2025, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) held its Annual Spring Conference entitled 'Is AI Transforming IP?'

For the last few years, lots of attention has been paid to AI and IP. The Supreme Court has already considered whether AI can be regarded as an inventor. There is also on-going litigation, in various jurisdictions, on whether training AI systems with copyright material infringes copyright, in what circumstances the outputs might infringe; as well as when, if at all, AI-generated content, designs or other outputs might be protected by intellectual property rights and, if so, for whose benefit.

While these are important questions that involve the application of the existing understandings of the law to new factual scenarios, the conference moved beyond them to focus on: (i) what AI reveals about existing law; and (ii) how AI might be changing IP, altering the legal tests with which we have become familiar, as well as the assumptions that underlie them – and what the implications might be.

For more information see:

https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-spring-conference