Germany - Robert Kneschke v LAION e.V.

Claimants: Robert Kneschke (‘Kneschke’)

Defendant: LAION e.V. (‘LAION’)

Kneschke is a Berlin based image producer and photographer.

LAION is a non-profit organization that has set itself the goal of promoting research in the field of AI by providing open data sets. Amongst others, LAION offers the ‘LAION-5B’ dataset for training AI image generators. This dataset consists of hyperlinks to websites with image content as well as a corresponding content description of the image to be found on the URL.

LAION uses an AI-crawler to check the dataset for content accuracy. For this analysis, the AI must download the images stored in the dataset.

Kneschke brought an action against LAION before the Hamburg Regional Court because one of his images, which is publicly accessible on the website ‘Bigstock’ with watermarks, was downloaded by LAION.

Kneschke’s Claims

Kneschke argues, that the usage of his image by LAION in the aforementioned dataset constitutes a copyright-relevant reproduction within the meaning of Sec. 12 (1) German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz).

LAION’s Defence

LAION defends the claim by arguing that an act relevant under copyright law does not exist and, moreover, that the copyright limitations provisions of Sec. 44b and 60d German Copyright Act are relevant, which would allow LAION to make such reproductions even without the consent and/or economic participation of the copyright owner.

Prerequisite for Authorised Use pursuant to Sec. 44b German Copyright Act:

• Publicly accessible work;
• Utilization of data mining to obtain information about patterns, trends and correlations;
• No reservation of use in machine-readable form.

Judgement of the Court

The Court dismissed the action. In the opinion of the chamber, downloading the image in the context of creating the dataset is covered by Sec. 60d German Copyright Act, which privileges text and data mining for the purpose of scientific research. This is justified by the fact that the dataset was published free of charge and thus made available to the field of AI research.

With regard to the applicability of Section 44b German Copyright Act, the court ruled that the standard was in principle applicable, but that an effective reservation of use had been declared. This can be declared not only by the copyright owner, but also by third parties who derive rights from the copyright owner. The court tends to favour the requirement of machine readability, which Section 44b UrHG presupposes, as fulfilled even in the case of a reservation of use written in ‘natural language’.