Sunday Surprises

The IPKat brings you the latest IP news, events, and opportunities.

Events

NIR events.

The Norwegian Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (NIR) announced upcoming activities. On 3 June 2025, the event ‘EU trade mark law and freedom of expression: An "IKEA-plan" to reconcile them’ will take place with the participation of PermaKat Eleonora Rosati. On 11 and 12 September 2025, the NIR Nordic Young Practitioners Conference will be held in Oslo. More information is available here.

oriGIn 2025 Expert Meeting.

The Organization for an International Geographical Indications Network (oriGIn) will hold its Expert Meeting on 12 and 13 June 2025 in Geneva. The event is organized with the support of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) and will address the latest developments and challenges on GIs protection and enforcement. Further details are here.

Opportunities

Call for papers: Tübingen Conference for AI and Law.

The CZS Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Law is calling for papers for the Tübingen Conference for AI and Law. The call welcomes contributions from academic researchers in computer science and law. The topics of interest comprise the breadth of research connecting AI and law. The conference will take place on 5 and 6 November 2025 in Tübingen. The deadline for submissions is 3 June 2025. Further details are here.

Postdoctoral researcher in technology and regulation at HPI.

The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) seeks to recruit a postdoctoral researcher in technology and regulation. The selected candidate will work, inter alia, on ethical, legal and social aspects of AI. The deadline for applications is 15 June 2025. More information is available here.

Other developments

EUIPO report on generative AI and copyright.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) released the report ‘The Development of Generative Artificial Intelligence from a Copyright Perspective’. The report centres on three main areas: using copyright-protected works as training data for Generative AI (GenAI) models, the legal questions raised due to new content generated by GenAI models, and the wider implications for the copyright system. More information is available here. Read the report here.

USCO pre-publication version of Part 3 of the Report on generative AI training.

The U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) released a pre-publication version of Part 3 of the Report on the legal and policy issues related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and copyright. The Report is being released in three Parts. Part 1, published in July 2024, recommended federal legislation to address unauthorized digital replicas. Part 2 of the Report, released in January 2025, tackled the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI (GenAI), in which, inter alia, it was stated that the existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to AI as they have applied to tech innovations in the past. The pre-publication version Part 3 covers the legal implications of training AI models on works protected by copyright, including licensing and potential liability. Further details here. The pre-publication version of Part 3 is available here.

EPO report ‘Standards and the European patent system’.

The European Patent Office (EPO) released the report ‘Standards and the European patent system’. The report was conducted under the aegis of the EPO’s Observatory on Patents and Technology. It comprises insights into the EPO dataset linking patents and standards and perspectives on SEP litigation under the Unified Patent Court. Review the report here.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.