As innovation opens up new horizons at breathtaking speeds, brand owners and content creators turn to Fross Zelnick to help them navigate complex IP matters.
AI technology is refashioning how every business creates and competes at breakneck speed. Companies and their counsel are fighting valiantly to keep up, but their questions are vexing:
- How do we protect our creative content from unwanted use?
- How do we assert our content rights if they are infringed?
- Can we license or otherwise monetize content that AI companies scrape?
- Can we protect data types that fall outside of creative pursuits?
- How do we define and enforce our brands in a world where AI is both a distinct service and a ubiquitous tool embedded across product and service lines?
- How do we use AI productively within our own business without triggering exposure?
Fross Zelnick has been answering similar questions for fifty years. AI may be new, but the challenges it presents to brand identity and content creation are our bread and butter. This is why clients, large and small, are seeking our advice now as to how to handle the years ahead.
Diverse AI Clientele
We represent cutting-edge developers, legacy content creators, AI marketplaces and service providers, and traditional companies that are embedding AI into their products and services—quite simply, every type of business affected by the technology.
Our first-hand experience in every facet of the AI ecosystem allows us to recognize patterns and trends others might miss—a broad perspective that benefits all our clients.
Copyright
We protect and defend the full spectrum of content creators and managers, including publishers, television and movie studios, artists, writers, designers, consultants, and the businesses and agencies that serve them. Our deep understanding of fair use, its history, and its effective application provides our clients with significant strategic advantages.
We assist creators in lawsuits against AI developers who are scraping content for training purposes, but we also help clients exit or avoid litigation altogether through novel licensing agreements. These arrangements transform the prospect of litigation into value for our clients—and lay solid groundwork for future licensing in the evolving AI ecosystem.
Creative clients also rely on us to execute comprehensive, cost-effective copyright filing programs that protect vast collections of data and content, including websites, catalogs, and databases, from unauthorized scraping.
As companies integrate AI into every level of their business, the copyright risks of AI-generated content are becoming acute and unavoidable. As our clients incorporate AI into their processes and products, we help them evaluate exposure, clarify the ownership of AI outputs, avoid or mitigate infringement claims, and navigate indemnification on both sides of production.
Trademark
From helping fierce young companies in creating the AI models of the future to guiding legacy companies in adapting to a new category of technology, Fross Zelnick is uniquely positioned to help clients understand, prosecute, and enforce their trademark rights.
Today, AI serves as a key differentiator between companies, but as adoption spreads, those distinctions will blur. Most, if not all, enterprises will engage with AI on some level, whether they are using AI as an enhancement to existing services, as the heart of a new product line, or as the core of their entire business.
Over time, clear and enforceable trademarks that take AI into account will be more critical to a brand’s success, and increasingly difficult to establish.
Our five decades of prosecution experience allow us to understand how the trademark office is developing its approach to AI-related branding and to track how that approach is changing over time. Our clients will be equipped to meet each twist and turn deftly and nimbly.
Meeting the Moment
AI is new, but technological innovation is not. We are at the forefront of AI-related IP practice today because we have met the moment countless times before—helping clients weather the arrival of countless innovative technologies, including domain names, content digitalization, deepfake technologies, green technologies, NFTs, and cryptocurrency-based services.
Through it all, we know what changes and what stays the same. We take deep satisfaction in guiding clients safely and strategically through the uncertainty of AI technology, and every technology to follow.