Background
Getty Images (US) Inc, Getty Images International UC, Getty Images (UK) Ltd, Getty Images Devco UK Ltd, iStockphoto LP and Thomas M Barwick Inc brought claims against Stability AI Ltd for copyright and trade-mark infringement arising from the use of Getty-owned photographs to train the Stable Diffusion model and to generate AI-produced images. The court considered claims under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Trade Marks Act 1994, together with issues of licensing and passing off. The judgment is the first substantive trial decision in the UK on AI training and creative dataset use.
AI interaction
The court held that the Stable Diffusion model “does not store or reproduce any Copyright Works … and is not an ‘infringing copy’,” rejecting Getty’s claims of secondary infringement under ss. 22–23 CDPA. It found only a “historic and extremely limited” trade-mark infringement under s. 10(2) TMA, where certain outputs displayed Getty or iStock marks, and dismissed claims under s. 10(1) and s. 10(3). The judge concluded that Stable Diffusion does not contain copies of protected images and that training data use alone does not establish infringement. The decision frames how UK law will approach AI-model training and trade-mark use in generative outputs.
Notes:
- Previous court ruling.
- The High Court partly upheld Getty’s trade-mark claim but rejected all copyright allegations. It directed that “consequential matters arising in light of this judgment will be dealt with at a hearing in due course,” meaning remedies and costs are to be determined later. The judgment is final on liability at first instance and may be appealed to the Court of Appeal.
- This High Court document, dated 16 December 2025 and issued as an Approved Judgment (Form of Order)’ grants Getty permission to appeal on the secondary copyright infringement point, describing it as a novel and important issue about how the CDPA phrase ‘infringing copy’ applies “in the context of an AI model,” and it refuses Stability permission to appeal the trade mark findings at this stage. It is not a Court of Appeal decision, it is the High Court’s permission decision and case management in the form of an order.