German court: a similar motif alone is not copyright theft

The dispute involved an animal photographer who took a distinctive picture of dogs reaching for a toy underwater. Her former business partner fed that photograph into AI software and generated a new image from it. The image later appeared on his company's website. The photographer sued him for copyright infringement. The case went to the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf, which issued an order in April 2026 with case number 1-20 W 2/26.

The idea is free

The court found that adopting a motif through artificial intelligence does not infringe copyright if the original's individual creative features are not taken over. The motif itself and the underlying idea are generally free from protection. German patent offices and courts also consistently refuse protection to processes driven purely by software without significant human involvement. Under paragraph 2, subsection 2 of the copyright act, a work must be a "personal intellectual creation". The line runs not between "by hand" and "by machine", but between a general idea and an individual, recognisable expression.

A lawyer who runs an IT law blog notes that this ruling does not mean anything goes. If a model faithfully reproduces a unique arrangement of framing, light, and composition, the outcome may differ. A similar dispute continues in the case of photographer Robert Kneschke against the LAION association. The argument that models are trained under the data exploration exception was expressly rejected.

Brussels counts and votes

Europe is simultaneously sorting out the rules. On 10 March 2026, MEPs adopted a package of recommendations on protecting works from use by artificial intelligence by 460 votes to 71, with 88 abstentions. Parliament demands that EU copyright law cover all generative AI systems on the single market, as the creative sector generates 6.9 percent of the Union's GDP. MEPs want fair pay for the use of protected content and full transparency. Providers and users of models would have to publish a detailed list of works used for training, along with logs of indexing robot activity. The idea that AI providers should buy a "global licence" for training in exchange for a one-off flat fee was rejected.

Labelling duties also apply. From 2 August 2026, the EU AI Act obliges providers and users of generative tools to mark content in a machine-readable way and label it as artificially generated. In practice, anyone publishing an image from a generator must disclose its origin. Creative communities reacted nervously. On ArtStation, artwork carrying a slogan against training models on artists' work appeared en masse.