Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Limited

Case posture

As alleged in the claims summarized by the High Court ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶¶ 1, 8–11) [§ 51], Getty advanced primary and secondary copyright, database-right, trade mark, and passing-off claims concerning Stable Diffusion. As alleged in the claims summarized by the High Court ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶ 8) [§ 52], Getty alleged that Stability scraped millions of its Visual Assets from Getty’s websites without consent and used those images to train and develop versions of Stable Diffusion. As stated by the court in its trial judgment ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶ 9) [§ 106], Getty acknowledged that there was no evidence of training and development of Stable Diffusion in the United Kingdom and abandoned that claim. As stated by the court in its form-of-order judgment ([2025] EWHC 3343 (Ch), ¶¶ 4–6) [§ 153], the court dismissed the abandoned training-and-development, outputs, and database-right claims without adjudicating their merits. The court ruling after trial ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶¶ 600, 758(viii)) [§ 101]: the High Court dismissed the secondary-infringement claim under CDPA 1988, ss. 22–23, 27; in its 2025-11-04 judgment it stated that an “article” may be intangible and that, in its final iteration, Stable Diffusion did not store or reproduce the Copyright Works and had never done so, while separately stating that development involved reproduction of those works.

Recorded appeals and source window

As stated by the court in its form-of-order judgment and in the court-stamped consent-order copy ([2025] EWHC 3343 (Ch), ¶¶ 7–11; consent order, 2026-02-20, at 2) [§ 152], the High Court granted Getty permission on 2025-12-16 to appeal the secondary-infringement dismissal, and the later order records its Appellants’ Notice filed on 2026-01-05.

As stated by the court in its form-of-order judgment ([2025] EWHC 3343 (Ch), ¶¶ 12–14) [§ 155], the High Court refused Stability’s application for permission to appeal the trade mark findings on 2025-12-16.

As stated by the court in the court-stamped consent-order copy (2026-02-20, at 2) [§ 156], Stability filed a notice seeking permission to appeal the trade mark findings on 2026-01-20, and Getty filed a contingent trade mark permission application and notice on 2026-02-03; these recitals record applications, not grants of permission or appellate merits decisions.

According to the court docket information summarized in the official Court of Appeal case tracker (CA-2026-000007, information correct as of 2026-11-02, reviewed 2026-11-03) [§ 154], the appeal from the December 17, 2025 order was awaiting a hearing, with Hearing Status listed as a float on November 11, 2026; that provisional listing does not establish that a hearing occurred or that no later unlisted activity exists.

Issues addressed in the record

As stated by the court ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶¶ 402, 453(i), 465(i), 466, 758(iv)(a), (v)(a)) [§ 102], its findings of ISTOCK infringement under Trade Marks Act 1994, s. 10(1)–(2) concerned v1.x accessed via the Developer Platform and v1.4 via DreamStudio; its conclusion at ¶ 758 referred to the Spaceships and Dreaming examples, while ¶ 453(i) described the section 10(1) finding as based specifically on the Spaceships Image and ¶ 402 said the model for the Dreaming Image was unknown. As stated by the court after trial ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶ 758(iv)(b), (v)(b)) [§ 103], the GETTY IMAGES claim under Trade Marks Act 1994, s. 10(1) failed, while its s. 10(2) finding was based specifically on the First Japanese Temple Garden Image generated by v2.1. As stated by the court after trial in its Trade Marks Act 1994, s. 10(2) analysis ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶¶ 466–467) [§ 107], the global assessment applied specifically to the Spaceships, Dreaming, and First Japanese Temple Garden examples and was highly fact-sensitive; the court said it could not conclude that every watermark generated by the same version of a model would necessarily infringe. The court ruling after trial ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶ 758(vi)) [§ 104]: the High Court dismissed the Trade Marks Act 1994, s. 10(3) claim. As stated by the court after trial ([2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), ¶¶ 542, 758(vii)) [§ 105], it declined to address passing off because the point had not been properly argued and neither party invited further consideration after the partial trade mark findings.