U.K. High Court Issues First Major Ruling On Generative AI And IP

On November 4, 2025, the U.K. High Court issued its highly anticipated decision in Getty Images (US) Inc. v. Stability AI Ltd., marking the first time a U.K. court has examined the inner workings of a generative AI model. Getty Images had sued Stability AI in the U.K. for copyright infringement and forms of trademark infringement based on Stability AI's use of Getty content to train its AI.

The court found that the model itself did not reproduce the asserted works and found limited trademark infringement due to reproduction of the Getty Images watermark on a small number of photos but otherwise dismissed the trademark claims.

Getty abandoned its primary copyright claims at the end of trial because the model had not been trained on the asserted works. This causes the judgment to be interesting but of limited use going forward due to that limitation.