Category: Intellectual Property
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Legal500 Switzerland
Honored and grateful to share that BMG Avocats has been recognized by Legal 500 in the field of Intellectual Property, along with my partner Anne-Virginie La Spada. I am particularly thankful to have for the kind words received: “Philippe Gilliéron provides exceptional attention in copyright, digital technologies and emerging AI issues”, and “We have worked…
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Recognition in Chambers Europe 2026 (Intellectual Property)
I am honored to be once again ranked in the Chambers Europe 2026 guide in the field of Intellectual Property. This recognition primarily reflects the trust of my clients, for which I am sincerely grateful, as well as the quality of the work carried out together with my colleagues at BMG Avocats on often complex…
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IP requirements and scope of protection: speaker at INGRES Zurich IP Retreat
I am very pleased to have been invited this year by my colleagues Michael Ritscher and Christoph Gasser to attend the conference organized by INGRES known as the “Zurich IP Retreat,” which is held every two years and brings together a number of international practitioners and academics in the field of intellectual property. This year,…
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AI and copyrights: Anthropic historic settlement
On September 5, 2025, Anthropic requested U.S. District Judge William Alsup to approve a USD 1.5 billion settlement entered into with the plaintiffs to put an end to the class-action lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books to train its AI chatbot Claude without permission. Background…
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Trademark Law and proof of use: burden of proof
On April 3, 2025, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to remind a litigant slightly unfamiliar with trademark law that it was not sufficient to allege non-use in a civil action, but that it was also necessary to make it plausible. In the absence of any evidence whatsoever, the party against whom non-use of the…
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Registering a Pattern as a Trademark in Switzerland: Practical Lessons from the Federal Supreme Court’s Ruling
On March 27, 2025 the Swiss Federal Supreme Court issued a major ruling in trademark law regarding the possibility—or rather, the impossibility—of registering a graphic pattern as a trademark in Switzerland. This decision is particularly relevant for businesses in the design, fashion, and textile sectors, as well as intellectual property law professionals. I. Facts The…
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Artificial Intelligence and the Law: The Anthropic Case and the Question of Fair Use
Author: Prof. Philippe Gilliéron, attorney at BMG Avocats, expert in technology and artificial intelligence law in Switzerland Does building a dataset to train an AI model constitute “fair use”? A response to Thomson Reuters? The Facts On August 19, 2024, three authors filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, the developer of Claude, for copyright infringement before…
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US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia confirms in the Thaler case that an AI cannot be the author of a work
On 18 March 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit issued on 18 August 2023 [Thaler v. Perlmutter, 687 F. Supp. 3d 140 (D.D.C. 2023)] refusing to attribute authorship to an artificial intelligence system.…
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Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence: A Landmark AI Copyright Case
On February 11, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware ruled in Thomson Reuters et al. v. Ross Intelligence, Inc. (No. 1:20-cv-613-SB) that the reproduction of copyrighted works for AI training did not qualify as fair use under U.S. copyright law. This decision has significant implications for AI-generated legal research and…
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Artificial Intelligence: GenAI and designers – best practices
Given at the AI Summit in Paris on February 11, 2025, this presentation aims to draw the attention of creative teams to the potential pitfalls posed by GenAI suppliers’ terms and conditions, more specifically as to intellectual property rights and ownership is concerned, and to offer practical guidance to avoid/mitigate risks.