Copyright and legal rulings
Getty Images v. Stability AI (UK) — Judgment [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), 4 November 2025
Claim
Mrs Justice Joanna Smith DBE of the High Court of England and Wales (Chancery Division) gave judgment in Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Ltd on 4 November 2025. The court threw out Getty’s secondary copyright claim — ruling that a Stable Diffusion model’s internal settings (its “weights”) are not an “infringing copy” under sections 22–23 of the UK’s 1988 copyright law (the CDPA) — and found only limited trademark infringement involving reproduced watermarks. Getty had already dropped its main claim, that the training itself infringed copyright, because the training had happened outside the UK. This is the first significant UK ruling on copyright and AI training.
Sources
- Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), full judgment ↗
- Ropes & Gray, “Getty Image Loses Copyright Infringement Claim Against Stability AI,” 14 January 2026 ↗
Referenced in
- Framework §2
- AI-SAF-N Data pillar
- Refining §3.2