Getty Images asked the Court of Appeal of England and Wales on Wednesday, Nov. 11, to revive its UK copyright claim against Stability AI over the image model Stable Diffusion. The court's hearing list sets the appeal for Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th November. No ruling has been given.
The court list states the central issue: "whether an AI model trained using copyright-protected images can constitute an 'infringing copy' under section 27 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, even where the model does not itself retain or reproduce the original images."
Getty argues that a model is an infringing copy when imported into the UK if making it in the UK would have infringed copyright, even if the model holds no copies of the images. The High Court rejected that reading.
What the High Court decided
The appeal is from an order of Mrs Justice Joanna Smith dated 17 December 2025, following the 4 November 2025 judgment [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch). Getty's skeleton argument calls it "the first trial relating to infringement of intellectual property rights in connection with a generative AI model to reach judgment in this jurisdiction."
At trial, Getty abandoned its primary copyright and database right claims. Its skeleton says this followed cross-examination of Stability's witnesses, on the basis that the training and development of Stable Diffusion had occurred outside the UK. What remained was a claim of secondary infringement: importing or dealing in an "infringing copy."
The skeleton lists the findings that went Getty's way:
- Stable Diffusion is an "article," and an article "is capable of being an electronic copy stored in intangible form."
- Downloads of Stable Diffusion on Hugging Face amounted to importation into the UK.
- Stability had distributed the model in the course of a business, via Hugging Face and its model licensing programme.
The judge still dismissed the claim. She held that "an infringing copy must be a copy." She also held: "The model weights for each version of Stable Diffusion in their final iteration have never contained or stored an infringing copy." The experts agreed that the model weights do not directly store the pixel values associated with billions of training images, the skeleton records.
The judge also found that Stability had infringed Getty's trade marks in part. City AM reports that this was only for older models and on isolated examples. That part is not under appeal.
What Getty is asking the court
Section 27(3) says an article is also an infringing copy if "(a) it has been or is proposed to be imported into the United Kingdom, and (b) its making in the United Kingdom would have constituted an infringement of the copyright in the work in question, or a breach of an exclusive licence agreement relating to that work."
Getty's case rests on the word "making." Its skeleton says the judge's finding is wrong "on the plain wording of the provision, which is directed to the acts involved in 'making' the article." It argues that the judge "effectively ignored the wording of s 27(3)." It also cites the 1952 Gregory Committee Report, which led to the predecessor rule in the Copyright Act 1956. Getty says that rule was meant to stop people from escaping UK copyright by making an article abroad and importing it.
To make the point, the skeleton quotes an article by James Hall in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice: "When one makes a cake, it is not the act of taking it out of the oven that is 'making' but of the weighing and combination of ingredients, followed by its baking."
In court on Wednesday, Getty's barrister said the company has "a very sophisticated database" of images, which "makes its content very desirable for use in connection to training AI models," City AM reported. She added that Stability "doesn't think it should have to pay" for this content, according to City AM.
Stability AI's answer
Stability has served a Respondent's Notice. Getty's skeleton says it challenges the findings that Stable Diffusion is an article, and that Stability carried out an act of importation or distribution.
Stability's written argument is listed on the judiciary website. We could not read a usable copy of it, so the Stability points that follow are taken from City AM and MLex.
City AM reports that Stability's skeleton argument focused on the fact that the images were downloaded and stored in data centres outside the UK, meaning UK copyright law does not apply. MLex reported that Stability used its own cake analogy on Wednesday, "comparing Getty's argument to treating a cake as an 'infringing copy' of a recipe because the chef had photographed it before baking."
Getty declined to comment to City AM. City AM said Stability AI was approached for comment.
Music industry joins in
The record industry body BPI filed a skeleton argument as a proposed intervener. It says it supports Getty's submissions and that the case "has far-reaching ramifications across the scope of the creative industries, and specifically for the music industry."
What the appeal will not settle
Law firm Pinsent Masons wrote on Nov. 9 that content creators and AI developers "should not expect the eventual judgment to provide answers to all the questions they might have on how UK copyright law applies to generative-AI systems." Its analysis says:
- Getty withdrew its primary infringement claims, so the courts have not confirmed that training in the UK would infringe.
- The parties agreed that Stable Diffusion does not store its training data, so the appeal is unlikely to decide whether models memorise their training data.
- Differing views on memorisation have led to different findings elsewhere. The Regional Court of Munich backed GEMA in two copyright cases against AI providers.
Pinsent Masons also notes that in March the UK government said it would gather more evidence and watch other countries before it decides on AI copyright reform.
What happens next
The court list sets the second day of the hearing for Thursday, Nov. 12. We will update this post when the court rules.
Sources
- Court of Appeal live streaming list: Getty Images v Stability AI (judiciary.uk)
- Getty Images replacement skeleton argument, CA-2026-000007 (judiciary.uk, PDF)
- BPI replacement skeleton argument as proposed intervener (judiciary.uk, PDF)
- Getty Images faces London AI firm in court (City AM, Nov. 11, 2026)
- Stability AI pushes back at Getty with cake analogy in UK copyright appeal (MLex, Nov. 11, 2026)
- Why Getty's appeal won't address all UK AI copyright questions (Pinsent Masons, Nov. 9, 2026)
