The U.S. Copyright Office’s Part 3 Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI Training, released in May 2025 as a pre-publication version, provides an in-depth examination of how generative AI systems are trained using copyrighted content. Building on stakeholder comments and substantial technical and legal research, the report analyzes whether and how the use of copyrighted works in AI training implicates copyright law, particularly under the fair use doctrine.
One of the key takeaways comes by way of its comments on whether copying a work to compile a training dataset for a generative AI model is transformative.
> The topline: “In the Office’s view, training a generative AI foundation model on a large and diverse dataset will often be transformative … But transformativeness is a matter of degree, and how transformative or justified a use is will depend on the functionality of the model and how it is deployed.”
The Copyright Office emphasizes that transformativeness in generative AI training is a spectrum, dependent on how the model functions and is deployed. At the most transformative end of the spectrum are models used for research or non-substitutive purposes, such as content moderation, where the use diverges from the expressive purpose of the original works. At the least transformative end are models trained to produce outputs closely resembling copyrighted works – like generating images of known characters – especially when these outputs compete directly in the same market.
According to the Copyright Office, many uses fall in between, where models are trained on specific content types to appeal to the same audiences as the original works, rendering them only modestly transformative. The Office notes that applying technical guardrails or restrictions, such as blocking requests for excerpts, can enhance transformativeness by limiting the model’s ability to replicate the expressive purpose of the original content.
Luxury goods sales are likely to fall between 2 and 5 percent this year, according to a forecast that Bain & Co. released on Wednesday. This comes in contrast with its earlier projection of 0 to 4 percent growth for the year. Bain “cited economic pressures and price fatigue over the first three months of the year, and noted shoppers were waiting for new, more creative products from brands,” per Reuters, which noted that “while the large majority of luxury shoppers polled by the consultancy, 75 percent, said tariffs would not likely cause them to make fewer luxury purchases in the future, around half of those who had already pulled back over the past year said it was due to price increases in the sector.”
A dive into pricing in China is coming but in the meantime … Luxury brands are moving away from discounts in the Chinese market as they look to rebuild their images in the eyes of consumers. According to ReHub data reported by Bloomberg …
> None of Balenciaga’s products were discounted on Tmall in the first quarter or during November’s Singles Day shopping festival, marking a notable shift from the same periods last year, when the Kering-owned brand applied an average discount of 41%.
> Versace reduced prices on only 3% of its products in Q1, down from 12% in 2024.
> Valentino offered no discounts in February and March, compared to average markdowns of 40% and 30%, respectively, during those months last year.
> At the same time, Richemont’s Chloe and Capri Holdings’ Michael Kors, are “offering markdowns on Tmall similar to those that were available in 2024.”
Clarivate released its Trademark Filing Trends 2025 report this week, analyzing ten key trademark registers worldwide: the U.S., U.K., EU, France, Germany, India, Mainland China, Japan, and Australia. The report reveals the top 20 largest local and foreign-based trademark portfolios in each region and the law firms managing the largest trademark portfolios based on over 150 million records from the SAEGIS CompuMark database and trademark filing activity from 2015 to 2024.
Some highlights from the lengthy report …
> Mainland China remains the world’s largest trademark register, with 6.76 million filings in 2024 – ten times the volume of the U.S. – despite experiencing a third consecutive year of decline.
> U.S. trademark filings rose 9.1% in 2024, driven by a 25% increase in filings from foreign-based applicants, especially from Mainland China.
> U.S. trademark portfolios by volume: Disney Enterprises owned the largest trademark portfolio of any local U.S. company with 1,954 trademark registrations as of January 1, 2025. Mattel (toys and games), IGT (casino gaming) and Amazon (online retail and electronics) owned the next three largest portfolios with 1,525, 1,457, and 1,291 trademarks, respectively.
> Top portfolio holders include companies such as L’Oréal (France), LG Electronics (South Korea), Disney (U.S.), and Huawei (China), reflecting strong brand protection across industries.
And finally … the UKIPO confirmed that “UK businesses will avoid additional red tape and consumers will continue to benefit from a choice of goods from across Europe, as the government confirms it will maintain the UK’s current exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights regime, known as ‘UK+.’” It stated on Friday that the decision “means the UK can keep buying genuine goods from across the European Economic Area (EEA) and resell them in the UK without any extra permissions.”
