Stability AI largely wins UK court battle against Getty Images over
copyright and trademark
[November 05, 2025] By
KELVIN CHAN
LONDON (AP) — Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly
prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over
intellectual property.
Seattle-based Getty had accused Stability AI of infringing its copyright
and trademark by scraping 12 million images from its website, without
permission, to train its popular image generator, Stable Diffusion.
The closely followed case at Britain’s High Court was among the first in
a wave of lawsuits involving generative AI as movie studios, authors and
artists challenged tech companies’ use of their works to train AI
chatbots.
Tech companies have long argued that “fair use” or “fair dealing” legal
doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train
their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Tuesday's ruling
provides some clarity but still leaves big unanswered questions over
copyright and AI, experts said.
According to the judge’s written ruling, Getty narrowly won its argument
that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost the rest of its
case.
Both sides claimed victory.
“This is a significant win for intellectual property owners,” Getty
Images said in a statement.
Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S.
Stability, based in London, said it was pleased with the ruling.
“This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were
the core issue,” Stability's General Counsel Christian Dowell said.
Getty had accused Stability of both primary and secondary copyright
infringement.
Legal experts said the first one involves the act of reproducing
something without permission — similar to a dodgy factory churning out
counterfeit Chanel handbags or pirated CDs — while the second involves
importing those copies from another country.
In this case, Getty said Stability's use of its image library to train
and develop Stable Diffusion’s AI model amounted to breach of primary
copyright. Stability responded that the case doesn’t belong in the
United Kingdom because the AI model’s training technically happened
elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon.
During the three-week trial in June, Getty dropped its primary copyright
allegations, in a sign that it didn't think they would succeed. But it
still pursued the secondary infringement claims. Even if Stability’s AI
training happened outside the U.K., Getty said offering the Stable
Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies
of its images into the country.
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 Justice Joanna Smith rejected
Getty’s claims, ruling that Stable Diffusion’s AI didn’t infringe
copyright because it doesn’t “store or reproduce any Copyright Works
(and has never done so).”
Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark
appeared on some of the images generated by Stability's chatbot.
The judge sided with Getty but added that the case only partially
succeeded, and that her findings are "both historic and extremely
limited in scope."
“While I have found instances of trademark infringement, I have been
unable to determine that these were widespread," she said.
Experts said Getty’s move to drop part of its copyright case means
AI training is still in legal limbo.
“The decision leaves the U.K. without a meaningful verdict on the
lawfulness of an AI model’s process of learning from copyright
materials,” said Iain Connor, an intellectual property partner at
law firm Michelmores.
Smith said there was "very real societal importance" in deciding how
to strike a balance between the creative and tech industries. But
she added that the court can only rule on the "diminished" case that
remained and couldn't consider “issues that have been abandoned.”
A Getty spokeswoman declined to say whether there would be an
appeal.
Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the
United States against Stability. It originally sued in 2023 but
refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August.
The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the
generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and
creative industries.
AI companies are now fighting more than 50 copyright lawsuits — so
many that a tech industry lobby group has called on President Donald
Trump for help stop the court fights, saying they threaten AI
innovation.
Among the cases, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a
class-action lawsuit by authors while a federal judge dismissed a
similar lawsuit from 13 authors against Meta Platforms. Warner Bros.
has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, as have Disney and
Universal in seperate lawsuits, alleging that its image generator
creates copyrighted characters.
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AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.
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