CZECH REPUBLIC Trends and Developments Contributed by: Daniela Kozáková and Pavel Široký, ŠIROKÝ ZRZAVECKÝ, attorneys-at-law
Czech Art Law May AI be an author of the work protected by copyright? The impact of AI raised several interesting legal topics and issues. One of these topics was the legal nature of the artwork created by AI. This issue was resolved by the decision of the Municipal Court in Prague No 10 C 13/2023-16 on 11 October 2023 and is one of the first court decisions that addressed the question of authorisation of the graphic work made by AI based on the instruction of the physical person, the user of the software. Copyright in the Czech Republic is governed in par - ticular by Act No 121/2000 Coll., on Copyright, on Rights Related to Copyright and on Amendments to Certain Acts, as amended (the “Copyright Act”). The Copyright Act defines the work protected by copyright as a “literary or other artistic work and scientific work that is a unique result of the author’s creative activity and is expressed in any objectively perceivable form, including electronic form, permanently or temporarily, regardless of its scope, purpose or significance.” In addition, the Copyright Act clearly states in Section 5 that the author is “the natural person who created the work”. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is currently respon - sible for the implementation of the EU AI Act in the Czech legal system. Therefore, the definition of AI system for this part is borrowed from the EU AI Act, under which it is a “machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments”. In the case in question, the essence of the claim was to determine the authorship of a graphic created by AI based on the author’s assignment, with the defend - ant (which was a law firm) interfering with his copy - right by publishing the graphic on its website without the plaintiff’s consent. On the contrary, the defendant countered that an image created by AI in the environ - ment of the Czech legal system does not constitute a copyrighted work under the Copyright Act.
As part of the proceedings, the court first addressed the question of whether AI could be the author of the work. It was undisputed that the depiction of the shak - ing hands in question was created by means of AI. However, AI itself cannot be an author due to the fail - ure to meet the conditions of Section 5 of the Copy - right Act, according to which only a natural person (see above), who is not AI, can be the author. The plaintiff claimed in the proceedings that the image in question was created by AI based on his specific instruction and therefore he was entitled to the copy - right of the image created by AI. However, he did not manage to prove this fact with any evidence in the proceedings, only with his personal statement. The court further stated that “an image created by artificial intelligence does not constitute copyrighted work under the Copyright Act, as it does not meet the conceptual characteristics of copyrighted work, spe - cifically it is not a unique result of the creative activity of a natural person”. In addition, the plaintiff did not prove that he personally created the work, in which case the plaintiff could have become the author. It is also interesting how the court looked at the instruction itself, which was allegedly supposed to be the basis for the subsequent image created by AI. According to the court’s conclusions, in this case it was only the theme of the work, or possibly an idea, which, however, is not protected by copyright law. Finally, the court stated that copyright is a right belonging to an individually designated person, and therefore if “the image in question was not created by the plaintiff personally, but was created by artificial intelligence, it cannot by definition be a copyrighted work”. May AI be liable for breach of copyright when learning? As mentioned above, the Czech Copyright Act in prin - ciple prohibits using copyrighted work without the author’s consent, or without other legal authorisation (mainly resulting from statutory licences specified in the Copyright Act) (ie, legal reason for the authorised use of the copyrighted work even if the author has not granted consent).
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