Justin Pierce recently joined Supply Chain Brain to discuss the rapidly evolving legal issues surrounding agentic AI and its impact on intellectual property. The following is an excerpt:
Justin E. Pierce, co-chair of the intellectual property division of Venable LLP, addresses the unique liabilities and risks that are emerging with the growing use of agentic artificial intelligence.
There are dozens of legal cases pending in the U.S. right now concerning intellectual property ownership and the use of copyrighted material, caused by the arrival of agentic AI. The autonomous nature of AI agents — their ability to take actions with minimal or no human intervention — raises a number of questions that need to be resolved.
Creative content that’s generated by purely autonomous AI agents isn’t protectable by copyright, Pierce says. Only if a human steps in and makes some meaningful modification to the agent’s results does copyright law apply. That can be a concern for companies that are deploying agentic AI, yet view its output as proprietary and a source of competitive advantage.
Click here for the full interview.