Tuesday 30th September 2025

IP- Intellectual Property

IP rights are a set of international legislation regarding intellectual property, copyright, trademarks etc. It protects the expression of your ideas, but it doesn’t last forever.

Before this workshop, I knew a fair bit about IP rights, mostly through seeing people talk about terms such as ‘fair use’. In my own work I have had to consider copyright on projects, especially when it came to aspects like sound design which I often cannot make on my own. I have found places like BBC sound archive really useful as a student.

Previously I attended a masterclass on how to utilise IP on a trans-media project or franchise from Joshua Ngiam co-founder of IP and branding specialist company Animagine. This was an interesting look at the business side of IP and what companies are looking for.

It was very interesting hearing about IP from the eyes of someone working within the law side of it. Especially learning about organisations such as Design and Artist Copyright Society (DACS) who are currently speaking on the behalf of artists in political events. As an animator knowing what is and is not my own IP can be murky as often we work in groups or under someone else.

It was clear that most of the people around me (myself included) have quite strong opinions in regard to generative artificial intelligence, doubly when it is trained off of the copyrighted works of artists without any compensation. One of the arguments often given for AI is that humans already create based off of inspiration we take from others. I had to sit with this one for a while to try and articulate the ways in which I felt that human inspiration and feeding a machine is innately different to one another. While I’m still vehemently against AI, it was interesting exercise to try and push what my core beliefs are.

• Game Design
• Music Industry
  • Record companies can be very protective of their work, for non-student films or films that could have financial incentive it’s better to contact the company before using their song.
• Performer’s Rights
  • Performers rights are quite specific, although overlaps with the rights of the playwright, theatre, distributor, etc.

Some of the interesting lawsuits and cases that Roxanne showed us were:

• Zarya Kashtanova vs. US Copyright Office
  • Kashtanova attempted to copyright his AI generated comic book. When the US copyright office found out that the art was generated by Midjourney he was refused. However, the text and the placement of the text is copyrighted by Kashtanova.
• Getty Images vs. Stability AI
  • Getty Images won a lawsuit against Stability AI alleging that their photographs had been stolen and used buy Stability to train their AI. This case sets a precedent for other creatives who have had their work stolen and trained on AI.
• Arijit Singh vs. Codible Ventures LLP
  • Famous Bollywood musician had his voice synthesised by an AI company. This calls into question laws regarding rights to your own voice, face and personality, many countries currently have laws regarding this but the UK does not.

Something I have heard a lot about before particularly is the idea of ‘fair dealing’ or ‘fair use’, which protects things like reviews, pastiches, parodies etc. Especially online, the line of what’s fair use and what’s not is quite controversial. Sometimes uploads can use too much of something, calling into question how much it has been changed or added to whereas sometimes copyright holders may take unnecessary action on work that falls under fair use.

Where to post work?

• Posting on social media can get your work out there but it can also lead to problems regarding IP and copyright
• Eg. a lot of AI bots have crawlers all across the internet which pick up on work that isn’t their own. Even platforms like Instagram may train their AI on your work or messages and hide the way to deny it behind hard-to-find platforms.
• Some companies may not appreciate it if you post work that you have done for them without seeking permission, some may even make artists sign NDAs.
• Remember what you send out to companies, even if they don’t take you on it is possible they might use your work nonetheless.

Roxanne got us to do an exercise in which we held different roles within a studio. In the project we were hypothetically working on, the project deadline for a client was in 3 days, the art director was using AI based on another artist’s work (no permission), the voice over was using an AI trained off the voice of a celebrity (no permission) and the juniors were doing overtime without being paid.

• We all agreed that this was a very bad situation, and that it would genuinely be better to cut our losses and stop production.
• The misuse of AI was very concerning to us, especially as it would reflect poorly on both our studio and the client. It could also cause legal repercussions which our stand-in lawyer was concerned about. Many of us said that even if this project did get released that we would want our credit taken off the work.
• The employees not being paid was, in my opinion the biggest ethical and legal concern as it sounded like it went against the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.

All in all, this class was a very interesting look into the world of IP law, which while being something that animators don’t always think about, is a very important part of our practice and our ability to keep creating and profiting off of our work.