Both copyright and the exceptions and limitations to copyright are engines that drive new expression of all kinds, including musical expression. Recent developments in AI-generated music, like services from Suno and Udio, raise questions about how copyright law applies, or should apply, to the creation and use of AI music generation tools. In this presentation, leading AI copyright litigator Joe Gratz of Morrison Foerster will provide a look backward and a look ahead at the role copyright plays in the forward movement of technological innovation and musical creativity.
About Joseph C. Gratz
Joseph C. Gratz is a partner with the law firm of Morrison & Forester LLP in San Francisco. His practice focuses on litigating cases about copyright and new technologies, and he currently represents OpenAI and Stability AI in all of their pending U.S. copyright litigation. He regularly represents Amazon and Meta in intermediary liability copyright and trademark cases, and represented Google in the Google Books case.
An advisor to the forthcoming American Law Institute Restatement of Copyright, Mr. Gratz is a respected litigator and commentator on copyright and Internet law. Mr. Gratz testified in July of 2020 before the United States Senate Judiciary IP Subcommittee regarding Internet intermediary liability. He received the IP Vanguard Award in 2022 from the California Lawyers Association. Mr. Gratz received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his law degree, cum laude, from the University of Minnesota Law School. After law school, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable John T. Noonan, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.