Intellectual property rights violations
This is an emerging category, with more cases prone to appear as the use of generative AI tools–such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, or ChatGPT–becomes more widespread. Some content creators are already suing for the appropriation of their work to train AI algorithms without a request for permission or compensation. Perhaps even more damaging cases will appear as developers increasingly ask chatbots or assistants like CoPilot for ready-to-use computer code. Even if these AI tools have learned only from open-source software (OSS) projects, which is not a given, there are still serious issues to consider, as not all OSS licenses are equal, and some are incompatible with others, meaning that it is illegal to mix them in the same product. Even worse, some licenses, such as GPL, are viral, meaning that any code that uses a GPL component must legally be made available under that same license. In the past, companies have suffered injunctions or been forced to make their proprietary source code available because of carelessly using a GPL library.
ENTITY
3 - Other
INTENT
3 - Other
TIMING
3 - Other
Risk ID
mit59
Domain lineage
6. Socioeconomic and Environmental
6.3 > Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort
Mitigation strategy
1. Establish a comprehensive Intellectual Property and Open Source Software (OSS) governance framework, including a mandatory, periodic audit of all proprietary and OSS assets to identify license incompatibilities (e.g., strong copyleft licenses like GPL) and ambiguously licensed components, thereby mitigating legal and operational compliance risks. 2. Mandate the implementation of a rigorous Generative AI Policy requiring developers and content creators to document the source material's provenance and licensing status (especially for training data) and to clarify ownership rights for AI-assisted outputs, thereby addressing potential copyright infringement and legal liability issues. 3. Fortify contractual IP protections by requiring all employees, contractors, and partners to execute written agreements that explicitly assign intellectual property developed during their tenure to the organization, coupled with providing mandatory, continuous stakeholder training on IP awareness and trade secret protection protocols.