(Reporter: Lai Xiaomin) On the afternoon of October 23, the School of Law and Business (Intellectual Property School), jointly with the International Exchange and Cooperation Center, hosted an academic lecture themed "Navigating the Legal Maze: Copyright and Sourcing Issues in Artificial Intelligence Training Data" in Rooms 215-216 of the Education and Teaching Complex Building on Liufang Campus.Invited as the keynote speaker for this lecture was Professor Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons (Chinese name: Lu Jiben), a faculty member of the College of Law at the University of Toledo, USA. The event drew a large audience of teachers and students majoring in intellectual property-related disciplines.The lecture was moderated by Du Chunli, Director of the International Exchange and Cooperation Center, who also delivered a welcome speech on behalf of the university. Professor Jin Minghao, Dean of the School of Law and Business (Intellectual Property School), and Professor Zhang Yan, Vice Dean, were present at the event and expressed their gratitude to Professor Lu Jiben for accepting the invitation to visit.

        During the lecture, Professor Lu Jiben focused on the cutting-edge topic of "Copyright Compliance of AI Training Data". He conducted an in-depth analysis of a recent landmark case in the United States—the Bartz case, where Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages for training its AI model using pirated books. He pointed out the judicial trend reflected in this case: "transformative use" no longer necessarily constitutes a basis for fair use. Instead, the legitimacy of data sources, the existence of an authorized market, and the purpose of commercial use have become the key focus of court reviews.Professor Lu further compared the different approaches to AI data copyright governance between China and the United States. Specifically, the U.S. tends to rely on ex post facto judicial rulings, while China emphasizes ex ante administrative reviews. He highlighted that the "TRIK AI case" currently pending before the Beijing Internet Court will serve as a bellwether for defining the applicability of the copyright fair use system to AI training in China. Its outcome will directly impact the compliance strategies of Chinese AI enterprises and the protection of creators’ rights and interests.At the end of the lecture, Professor Lu engaged in a lively interaction with the teachers and students present on issues such as "whether China should introduce a mandatory data licensing mechanism" and "how to balance technological innovation and copyright protection". He also encouraged young students to pay attention to the evolution of laws amid technological changes and actively participate in the formulation of future rules.

       Professor Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons currently holds the positions of Distinguished Professor and Professor Emeritus at the College of Law, University of Toledo. He earned his Master of Laws from Temple University and Doctor of Juridical Science from Northeastern University, and has long been engaged in the teaching, research, and legal practice of copyright, trademark, cyberlaw, and international intellectual property law.According to incomplete statistics, he has published more than 10 monographs and over 30 academic papers in total. He also serves as a member of the American Law Institute (ALI), a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and an editorial board member of multiple academic journals.

       Professor Gibbons has visited China on numerous occasions for academic lectures, twice been named a Fulbright Scholar, and was appointed as the "Wenlan Scholar" Chair Professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. Endowed with rich experience in cross-border teaching, arbitration, and cultural industry consulting, his lecture this time combined an international perspective with local insights, delivering a feast of ideas to the faculty and students of the Intellectual Property discipline at Wuhan Institute of Technology.