The judgment was passed down on 4 November 2025 in Getty v Stability AI, the UK’s first case on infringement of intellectual property by generative AI. Most of it deals with trade mark infringement claims which unsurprisingly, given the evidence, upholds certain aspects of Getty’s claims and confirms that AI developers can be liable for outputs that misuse protected marks. 

On the copyright part, the primary infringement claims were dropped mid-trial. The case on secondary infringement (by importing infringing copies) was resolved in Stability’s favour.

The judge held that the term ‘article’ in the relevant copyright legislation can indeed include something that is intangible, such as an electronic copy stored in an intangible medium, the first time since the relevant law’s enactment in 1988 that this has been considered. 

However, having held that an intangible article can be an ‘article’ under the legislation, and so can in principle comprise an ‘infringing copy’, the judge proceeded to dismiss Getty Images’ claim of secondary copyright infringement for importing, possessing and dealing with an alleged ‘infringing copy’. She held that the ‘article’ itself must be a copy of the original work in order to be an ‘infringing copy’. Because an AI model such as Stable Diffusion does not actually store or reproduce any actual copyright works – and has never done so – it cannot be an ‘infringing copy’ under the relevant legislation, meaning Getty’s claims for secondary copyright infringement must fail.

Although Stability AI largely prevailed, this was not a sweeping win for either side, nor a decision that will have the impact some may have hoped for. The key issues in this difficult area around copyright infringement by training a gen AI model and by reason of its outputs remain undetermined.