Adopted on 10 March 2026, the European Parliament’s resolution on copyright and generative artificial intelligence spells out a clear agenda for legislative reform. If your business develops, deploys or uses AI – or creates content that AI systems consume – this is directly relevant to you.
Why Parliament acted
Copyright violations are already happening – at scale
There is evidence of widespread violation of copyright rules by GenAI providers, including the unauthorized collection of works from the internet, non-compliance with rights holders’ text and data mining rights reservations, the use of pirated sources, and the failure to seek licenses – a pattern that constitutes a clear violation of creators’ fundamental rights and demonstrates the need for strong measures to ensure that the AI ecosystem in the EU is fair and ethical.
The creative sector is large, vital – and threatened
The creative and cultural sector represents approximately 4% of EU value added and 6.9% of the EU’s gross domestic product, and employs around 8 million people. The risk of a gradual disappearance of the human dimension of creation in favour of AI-generated content poses an existential risk to European society and democracy, in that it blurs the boundaries between truth and falsehood and disrupts critical thinking.
The current opt-out system is not working
The current systems for the reservation of rights (“opt out”) to copyright-protected content are often impractical, may not cover all relevant acts of text and data mining, and lack the necessary transparency for effective implementation and enforcement.
EU law must apply wherever AI is sold – not just where it is trained
In order to prevent non-EU-based providers from gaining an unfair competitive advantage through non-compliance, rules protecting and enforcing authors’ rights at EU and national level must apply effectively to all services operating on the EU market.
What the Resolution calls for
A new legal framework – on top of existing copyright law
Parliament believes that current copyright law is insufficient to address the challenge of licensing copyrighted material for GenAI, and calls for an additional legal framework to clarify licensing rules and address potential infringements – including provisions ensuring effective cooperation of GenAI providers with creators, a functioning licensing market that restores the bargaining power of rights holders, and viable protection solutions.
Rights holders gain full control – including over uses beyond training
Rights holders, especially from the press and news media sector, must have full control over the digital use of their content by AI systems and models for training purposes, based on a robust and functioning possibility to exclude such use, underpinned by full transparency and source documentation. Furthermore, the use of protected content for purposes beyond training – such as inferencing and retrieval-augmented generation – can take place only with the express consent of the rights holders.
EU copyright law applies regardless of where AI is trained
When generative AI models and systems are placed or made available on the EU market, EU copyright law applies regardless of the jurisdiction in which the copyright-relevant acts underpinning the training of those models and systems take place – and where copyright is not observed, those models and systems are barred from being placed or made available on the EU market.
Itemized transparency – including for real-time crawling
Any provider or deployer of GenAI models and systems must ensure transparency concerning all copyright-protected content used to train those models and systems, consisting of an itemized list identifying each item of copyright-protected content used for training. For purposes such as inferencing and retrieval-augmented generation, which require continuous and real-time crawling, transparency must be complemented by an obligation for crawlers to be identifiable to web operators and for AI companies to maintain detailed records of their crawling activities.
No transparency = presumed infringement
Parliament calls on the Commission to propose the establishment of a rebuttable presumption that, for any generative AI model or system placed on the EU market, works and other subject matter protected by copyright or related rights have been used for the purposes of training, inferencing or retrieval-augmented generation, where the transparency obligations have not been fully complied with. Where a rights holder succeeds in legal proceedings on the basis of this presumption or through submitted evidence, any reasonable and proportionate legal costs and other expenses are to be borne by the provider of the AI model or system.
Collective licensing as the route to a working market
Parliament calls on the Commission to facilitate, through consultation with collective management societies, the establishment of voluntary collective licensing agreements per sector as a means to quickly establish a working licensing market that provides a balanced and efficient framework ensuring the fair remuneration of rights holders while enabling AI providers to access high-quality training data.
The EUIPO becomes the central infrastructure for compliance
Parliament proposes two specific roles for the EUIPO:
- Acting as the trusted intermediary that manages and lists opt-out exclusions, providing AI providers with a comprehensive tool to ensure copyright compliance.
- Supporting a sector-based, voluntary licensing process to streamline relations between GenAI providers and rights holders, establishing a workable, innovation-friendly framework that supports EU competitiveness.
AI-generated content gets no copyright protection
Content fully generated by AI that does not meet the established criteria for copyright protection should remain ineligible for copyright protection, and the public domain status of such outputs must be clearly determined.
Deep fakes and content labelling
- Parliament calls on the Commission to investigate measures to protect individuals against the dissemination of AI-generated digital image, audio or video content imitating their personal characteristics without consent, with digital service providers required to act against this illegal use.
- Parliament stresses the need to clearly label purely AI-generated content and calls on the Commission to issue an EU code of practice on content labelling without delay.
What happens next
Parliament recommends that the Commission urgently conduct a thorough assessment of whether the existing EU copyright framework adequately addresses the legal uncertainty and competitive effects associated with the use of protected works for the training of GenAI systems, including territoriality implications and the dissemination of AI-generated content that may substitute human-created expression.
A review of the CDSM Directive is expected to follow. The proposals in this resolution – from the rebuttable presumption of infringement to the new licensing architecture – are likely to shape that process directly.
How LYNX can help
The LYNX team advises clients across the full spectrum of AI and intellectual property law:
- Training data compliance audits
- Opt-out mechanism strategy and implementation
- Licensing negotiations with collective management societies and individual rights holders
- Enforcement and litigation support for rights holders
- Regulatory monitoring and advocacy
Whether you are an AI developer, a publisher, a media company or a creative professional, the legal landscape is shifting – and the consequences of inaction are increasingly concrete.
Contact LYNX today to speak with one of our IP and technology law specialists.
