Abstract
This chapter reflects on recent developments in international performers’ rights. In doing so, the discussion reveals a key tension: while performers’ rights are now well established under international laws, the relevance of the framework is threatened by new technologies, notably Artificial Intelligence (AI). The chapter describes how AI can produce faithful reproductions of performances without triggering infringement under the law. This is due to fact that performers’ rights protect recordings of a performance but not the performance itself. This leaves performers unprotected against unauthorized imitations of their interpretations. When AI creates new performance using pre-existing recordings, it does not reproduce the recordings but imitates them through data synthetization. As such, this use of performances falls outside the scope of protection granted by performers’ rights. This begs the question whether performers’ rights are still fit for purpose. Should performers’ rights be reformed, and importantly, has time come for a performers’ copyright?

Developments and Directions in Intellectual Property Law : 20 Years of The IPKat

Twenty Years of the IPKat

Hayleigh Bosher; Eleonora Rosati

IRL Press at Oxford University Press

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

German Historical Institute London

OUP Oxford

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Oxford University Press USA, Oxford, 2023

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Developments and Directions in Intellectual Property Law celebrates the 20th anniversary of award-winning intellectual property (IP) blog, The IPKat, originally founded in 2003. Over the past two decades, The IPKat has covered and commented on several of the most topical developments in the IP field from substantive, practical, and policy standpoints. Today, The IPKat is considered the “Most Popular Intellectual Property Law Blawg” of all time (source: Justia) and its readers are academics, members of the judiciary, policy and law-makers, practitioners, and students from all over the world. By bringing together several of the current and past contributors to The IPKat, this book reflects on the developments and directions that have emerged in the IP field over the past twenty years. Topics covered include changes within substantive IP rights, as well as IP law, policy, and practice broadly intended and from a global perspective. From copyright to trade marks, patents to designs, image and publicity rights to geographical indications, and developments in IP practice and the court system to contract drafting, readers of this book will find expert insights into some of the most notable developments in IP since the inception of The IPKat blog.