On 4 November 2025 the UK High Court handed down its judgment in the case of Getty Images (US) Inc (and others) v Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch) [High Court Judgment Template].
The case concerned the training, development and deployment of Stability AI’s “Stable Diffusion” generative AI model and, as one of the first and to date most high-profile intellectual property (IP) infringement claims against an AI developer to make it all the way to trial in the UK courts, was originally envisaged as having potential to provide much-needed wide-ranging judicial guidance on the application of existing UK IP law in the field of AI. However, as the case progressed and the scope of Getty’s claims gradually reduced to a shadow of the original, it became apparent that this judgment, whilst still of note in respect of a number of key issues, would not be the silver bullet which many had originally anticipated.
At over 200 pages the judgment is long and complex, including detailed discussion of the witness and expert evidence which the Court considered before reaching its findings.
Key takeaways at a high-level are:
- Primary Copyright Infringement: by close of evidence at the trial Getty had abandoned its key claims alleging that the training of Stability AI’s “Stable Diffusion” AI model and certain of its outputs had infringed Getty UK copyright works and/or database rights. Key reasons for this decision on the part of Getty would appear to be relatively limited evidence of actual potentially infringing output coupled with an acknowledgement that the development and training of Stable Diffusion had not taken place in the UK despite Getty’s claim being in respect of its UK rights. As a result, the Court declined to rule on these claims – meaning that the current legal uncertainty in this area continues, to the frustration of many.
- Secondary Copyright Infringement: for the purposes of establishing a secondary copyright infringement claim, the Court has confirmed that the model weights used in the training of an AI model can be considered “articles” for the purposes of the relevant legislation. However, in this case the Court went on to find that those model weights did not themselves contain any Getty copyright works and so could not be considered an infringing copy. Whilst this is helpful guidance, it has long been accepted that references to an “article” in the relevant legislation covers both tangible and intangible items, hence this was an unsurprising decision for the Court to reach.
- Trade Mark Infringement: the Court held that there was some limited evidence that certain earlier versions of Stable Diffusion had produced outputs which included a “Getty Images” UK registered trade mark as a watermark thereby infringing Getty’s registered trade mark. However, the Court emphasised that this finding is both “historic and extremely limited in scope” and that as a result of changes which had been made to later versions of Stable Diffusion, it could not hold that there was likely to be any continuing proliferation of such infringing output from Stable Diffusion.
- Exclusive Licensee Claims: the Court has confirmed that when bringing a copyright infringement claim in the capacity of an exclusive licensee (as opposed to copyright owner) the Court will consider in detail whether the licences in question meet the relevant legislative definition of an “exclusive licence”. As such, it must be a completely exclusive licence, excluding even the rights of the copyright owner themselves, granted to only one licensee and it must be signed. That said, the Court will be willing to apply a very broad definition when deciding whether those have been “signed” (e.g. not just wet ink but includes online acceptance). Again, whilst useful guidance, this essentially just confirms the already accepted interpretation of this legislation.
- Additional Damages Claim: as a result of the very limited findings of trade mark infringement on the part of Stability AI alongside the abandonment of the primary copyright infringement claims and failure of the secondary copyright infringement claim, the Court rejected Getty’s claims for additional/aggravated damages. The Judge noted that she could not hold that there had been any blatant and widespread infringement of UK IP rights by Stability AI, as Getty had claimed which would have justified an award of such damages.
For a more detailed summary and analysis of the case and each of these issues please see our full client briefing.