High Court Rules in Getty Images v Stability AI on Copyright and Trade Marks

The case concerned Stable Diffusion, an image generation model developed by Stability AI. By the time of judgment the issues had narrowed significantly: Getty Images had abandoned its claim relating to the training and development of the model and its claim that the model's outputs infringed copyright.

Secondary copyright infringement

Getty Images argued that importing and making Stable Diffusion available in the UK infringed copyright under sections 22 and 23 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, because the model was an infringing copy of its works. The judgment accepts that an "article" for these purposes may be intangible, but holds that an AI model such as Stable Diffusion, which does not store or reproduce any of the copyright works and has never done so, is not an "infringing copy". The claim was dismissed.

Trade marks and other claims

Getty Images succeeded under sections 10(1) and 10(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 in respect of iStock watermarks generated by users of early v1.x models accessed through Stability's DreamStudio and developer platform, and under section 10(2) for Getty Images watermarks generated by v2.x models. The successes were based on specific example images, and the judge noted that it is impossible to know on what scale such watermarks were generated in practice. The section 10(3) claim was dismissed, there was no evidence of UK users generating watermarks with the later SD XL and v1.6 models, and the judge declined to address passing off.

Why it matters

The judgment gives an early indication of how English courts approach the question of whether a trained model can itself be an infringing copy. Because the training claim was not pursued, it does not decide whether training a model on copyright works in the UK would infringe. For developers, rightsholders and businesses deploying generative AI tools, the wider policy questions on training data remain with the UK government, which consulted on copyright and AI in December 2024.

Sources

• Judiciary of England and Wales: Getty Images v Stability AI [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch)
• Judiciary of England and Wales: Approved judgment, Getty Images v Stability AI (PDF)