IP Law Daily, AI NEWS: London court trims Getty Images’ trademark and copyright claims against Stability AI, (Nov 5, 2025)

By Cheryl Beise, J.D.

In a mixed ruling settling some claims, the court found Stability AI was liable for trademark infringement, while dismissing Getty Images’ remaining secondary copyright infringement claims.

U.K. High Court of Justice yesterday issued a highly anticipated ruling in trademark and copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Getty Images against Stability AI. In a 205-page decision, Mrs. Justice Joanna Smith DBE determined that Stability AI’s image generator Stable Diffusion infringed Getty’s trademarked GETTY IMAGES and ISTOCK watermarks to the extent they were reproduced on AI generated images, but the court rejected Getty’s related claims for unfair advantage, trademark dilution, damage to reputation, and passing off. Regarding Getty’s sole remaining copyright claims for secondary infringement, the court agreed with Getty that intangible objects (such as Stable Diffusion’s model parameters, or “weights”) can qualify as an infringing “article” imported into the UK under UK copyright law. However, because Stable Diffusion “did not store or reproduce any copyrighted works (and has never done so),” there was no copyright infringement under the facts of this case (Getty Images (US) Inc. v. Stability AI Ltd., No. IL-2023-000007 (UK High Court of Justice Nov. 4, 2025)).

Getty Images is a global visual media marketplace and licensor of digital stock images. Getty licenses its own content under the Getty and iStockphoto brands, as well as images and visual assets created by third-party licensees. Over more than three decades, Getty Images has curated a collection of hundreds of millions of visual assets.

London-based Stability AI Ltd. (Stability) provides both open-source and revenue-generating software solutions that allow users to custom-generate images and artworks based on text queries. It offers generative AI tools and solutions for media generation and editing across image, video, 3D, and audio. These include its image generation model Stable Diffusion.

UK lawsuit. In January 2023, Getty and its affiliated entities (collectively, Getty) filed suit against Stability AI in the UK High Court of Justice, asserting claims for primary and secondary copyright infringement under sections 22 and 23 of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (“CDPA”), trademark infringement and related claims under Sections 10(1)-(3) of UK’s 1994 Trade Marks Act (“TMA”), and passing off. Getty claimed that Stability scraped data from millions of copyrighted works from Getty’s websites without authorization. Getty’s trademark claims focused on watermarks affixed to its images appearing in Stable Diffusion’s synthetic image outputs. Some of Getty’s claims were narrowed by an earlier ruling in the case and after a trial in June 2025, Getty abandoned its direct copyright infringement claim.

The court addressed two main questions in this ruling were: (1) Did Stability commit secondary copyright infringement under sections 22 or 23 CDPA through the model weights used for versions 1, 2, XL and 1.6 of Stable Diffusion available for download via Hugging Face? and (2) Did Stability infringe the Getty or iStock trademarks under sections 10(1), 10(2) or 10(3) of the TMA because of the display of watermark-like features in certain Stable Diffusion outputs?

Secondary copyright infringement. Getty Images’ remaining secondary copyright infringement claim alleged that Stable Diffusion was an “infringing copy” because it was imported into the UK, through its downloading in the UK. Getty’s copyright infringement claim depended on a finding that Stable Diffusion (v1, v2, XL and 1.6) was an “article” that is an “infringing copy” imported into the UK. It also required a finding that generated images were infringing copies of Getty’s copyrighted work, pursuant to section 27(3) CDPA.

The court agreed with Getty that the definition of an “article” extended beyond tangible articles and could include electronic copies stored in an intangible form. However, Getty’s claim faltered the second requirement. It was uncontested that Stable Diffusion’s model weights did not contain copies of any Getty copyrighted works. The court explained that in order for an article to constitute an “infringing copy,” it must have at some point in time consisted of, contained, or stored a copy of a copyright work. Getty’s copyright claim was dismissed

Trademark infringement claim. Getty alleged that Stable Diffusion (v1, v2, XL and 1.6) generated infringing image outputs in violation of sections 10(1), 10(2) and 10(3) of the TMA because they displayed Getty and iStock watermarks. To prove infringement, Getty submitted images that its representatives had generated using text prompts, as well as a few examples of allegedly infringing online images generated by third-parties. Under these facts, the judge could only find a few very limited examples of trademark infringement under sections 10(1) (double identity infringement) 10(2) (infringement) of the TMA committed in the UK.

The court dismissed Getty’s claims for unfair reputational harm under section 10(3) of the TMA because Stability did not attempt to trade on Getty’s goodwill. Rather, Stability took efforts to filter out watermarks, and if watermarks did appear, they were often distorted. The court also rejected Getty’s claim for passing off because the tort does not apply to post-sale confusion and in this case, confusion only could arise after a user downloaded or accessed Stable Diffusion.

The Case is No. IL-2023-000007.

Judge: Smith, J.

Attorneys: Lindsay Lane, Jessie Bowhill, and Joshua Marshall (Fieldfisher LLP) for Getty Images [US] Inc., Getty Images International U.C., Getty Images [UK] Ltd., Getty Images Devco UK Ltd., iStockphoto LP, and Thomas M. Barwick, Inc. Hugo Cuddigan, Edward Cronan, and Henry Edwards (Bird & Bird LLP) for Stability AI Ltd.

Companies: Getty Images [US] Inc.; Getty Images International U.C.; Getty Images [UK] Ltd.; Getty Images Devco UK Ltd.; iStockphoto LP; Thomas M. Barwick, Inc.; Stability AI Ltd.

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