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Samuel Cohen

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Sam Cohen is an associate in the Entertainment, Technology, and Advertising Practice Group in the firm's New York office.

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On October 22, 2025, Reddit, Inc. filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Perplexity AI, Inc. and associated data-scraping firms, alleging violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions (17 U.S.C. §1201), along with related claims for unjust enrichment and unfair competition. Building on the strategy advanced in its earlier Anthropic suit, Reddit frames the dispute not as a garden-variety copyright infringement case but as a §1201 anti-circumvention suit targeting what it calls “industrial-scale” evasion of technical controls used to harvest Reddit content through Google’s search results. According to the complaint, the defendants allegedly masked identities, rotated IP addresses, and bypassed access controls to scrape billions of Google search-engine results pages (“SERPs”) containing Reddit URLs, text, images, and videos—data that Reddit claims Perplexity subsequently incorporated into its “answer engine.”Continue Reading Anti-Circumvention: Reddit’s Case Against Perplexity

As of July 23, 2025, the White House has declared AI not just a strategic priority, but an industrial, informational, and cultural revolution the U.S. intends to lead.[1] The official Action Plan organizes this imperative around three mutually reinforcing pillars: (1) Accelerating AI Innovation, (2) Building American AI Infrastructure, and (3) Leading International AI Diplomacy and Security.[2] Here, we spotlight how emerging AI policy may reshape compliance, funding access, content authentication, and licensing deals around the globe.Continue Reading The 2025 AI Action Plan: Key Business and Legal Implications

On June 4, 2025, Reddit, Inc. (“Reddit”) filed suit against Anthropic, PBC (“Anthropic”) in the Superior Court of California, alleging that Anthropic scraped and commercially exploited Reddit user data—including deleted posts—without consent or compensation.[1] Unlike recent enforcement efforts that have centered on establishing copyright infringement liability, Reddit’s complaint brings five causes of action—breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels, tortious interference, and unfair competition—reflecting a strategic choice to deploy contractual and privacy-based claims to address Anthropic’s allegedly unauthorized scraping of Reddit data.[2]Continue Reading Beyond Copyright: Reddit’s Lawsuit Against Anthropic

In a significant move to address the tension between copyright and generative artificial intelligence (AI), the UK’s Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), and Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS) have announced plans to launch a collective licensing framework for AI training. The opt-in license would allow AI developers to use text-based published works—such as books, journals, and magazines—for training, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) while ensuring that creators are compensated. The license is expected to roll out in Q3 2025, following further consultation with publishers.Continue Reading UK’s Collective Licensing Initiative Aims to Harmonize AI and Copyright Law

Congress has reintroduced the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act— a bipartisan bill designed to establish a federal framework to protect individuals’ right of publicity. As previously reported, the NO FAKES Act was introduced in 2023 to create a private right of action addressing the rise of unauthorized deepfakes and digital replicas—especially those misusing voice and likeness without consent. While the original bill failed to gain traction in a crowded legislative calendar, growing concerns over generative AI misuse and newfound support from key tech and entertainment stakeholders have revitalized the bill’s momentum.Continue Reading Congress Reintroduces the NO FAKES Act with Broader Industry Support

The legal battles surrounding generative AI and copyright continue to escalate with prominent players in the Indian music industry now seeking to join an existing lawsuit against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. On February 13, 2025, industry giants such as Saregama, T-Series, and the Indian Music Industry (IMI) presented their concerns in a New Delhi court, arguing that OpenAI’s methods for training its AI models involve extracting protected song lyrics, music compositions, and recordings without proper licensing or compensation. This development follows a broader trend of copyright holders challenging generative AI companies, as evidenced by similar claims in the U.S. and Europe.Continue Reading Indian Music Industry Enters the Global Copyright Debate Over AI

The U.S. Copyright Office’s January 2025 report on AI and copyrightability reaffirms the longstanding principle that copyright protection is reserved for works of human authorship. Outputs created entirely by generative artificial intelligence (AI), with no human creative input, are not eligible for copyright protection. The Office offers a framework for assessing human authorship for works involving AI, outlining three scenarios: (1) using AI as an assistive tool rather than a replacement for human creativity, (2) incorporating human-created elements into AI-generated output, and (3) creatively arranging or modifying AI-generated elements.Continue Reading The Copyright Office’s Latest Guidance on AI and Copyrightability

YouTube has announced a slate of new AI detection tools to enhance its ContentID system. The tools are designed to address the challenges posed by AI-generated content, which is becoming increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. The announcement coincides with industry-wide calls for more robust detection mechanisms as the lines between AI-generated and human-produced content continue to blur.Continue Reading YouTube Unveils AI Detection Tools: Advancing ContentID for the AI Era

Given the introduction of the ‘NO FAKES’ Act by a bi-partisan group of senators within days of U.S. Copyright Office’s release of its digital replicas report asserting an “urgent need” for more cohesive protections at the federal level, it’s clear that momentum is building for federal oversight in the realm of deepfake and digital replication technology. This legislative effort is intertwined with broader national and global discussions about AI’s impact on privacy, intellectual property, and personal identity, alongside existing gaps in enforceable protections.Continue Reading Closer to a Federal Right of Publicity – Senate Introduces NO FAKES Act