Hank's IP Brew — Issue #21

Howdy, y'all.

This week: a constitutional showdown over who controls the U.S. Copyright Office after its director was abruptly ousted following a major AI report. Plus, the president of the United States posted a deepfake video of six Hollywood celebrities saying things they never said, without asking any of them. Lawyers are lining up. Both stories point to the same burning question: what happens to creator rights when they collide with raw political power?

Let's get into it.

Here's the sequence of events, because the timeline is the story.

In May 2025, Shira Perlmutter — the Register of Copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office — released Part Three of a comprehensive, multi-part report on AI and copyright that her office had been working on for two years, including a review of more than 10,000 public comments. The report's central finding: using copyrighted works to train generative AI systems "likely qualifies as fair use in some circumstances, but not in others." That's a nuanced, legally careful conclusion — not a crusade, not a manifesto. It's the kind of measured, expert analysis that Congress pays the Copyright Office to produce.

Two days after the report's release, the White House fired her.

The stated reason was that the Copyright Office falls within the executive branch and the president has removal authority. Perlmutter's position was the opposite: the Register of Copyrights is a legislative branch officer, advising Congress, and the president has no power to remove her — any more than he could fire a congressional staffer. A federal appeals court agreed with Perlmutter in September 2025 and reinstated her. The Trump administration appealed.

On June 30, 2026 — more than a year after the original firing — the Supreme Court declined to grant the administration's request for emergency relief. Perlmutter stays. The Court's order was explicit that it was "not a ruling on the merits," meaning the underlying constitutional question about who controls the Copyright Office isn't resolved yet. But the practical effect is that she remains in place while the litigation continues.

Why this matters for creators

The Copyright Office isn't a glamorous institution. Most creators don't think about it until they need to file a registration. But it is the primary source of expert copyright policy advice to Congress — the body that actually writes the laws creators depend on. When the Office says AI training may not always be fair use, that finding shapes legislation, informs courts, and gives creators a foothold in the policy debate.

The White House's March 2026 National AI Policy Framework took the opposite position: AI training on copyrighted material does not violate copyright law. That's not a court ruling or a statute — it's a policy statement. But it reflects where this administration's priorities sit. Firing the Copyright Office director two days after she submitted a more creator-friendly analysis to Congress is not subtle.

Judge Florence Pan, writing for the D.C. Circuit panel that reinstated Perlmutter, called the firing "a violation of the separation of powers that is significantly different in kind and in degree from cases that have come before." She compared it to the president firing a federal judge's law clerk — reaching into the legislative branch to silence an expert who was doing exactly what Congress authorized her to do.

The bigger picture

When Perlmutter testified before the Senate in May 2026, Sen. Peter Welch asked her a direct question: without the ability to discover whether their work was used to train AI models, do artists "basically lose any protection that copyright is intended to provide?" Her answer: "Yes, I agree that this needs to be dealt with."

That exchange is worth sitting with. The nation's top copyright official, testifying under oath before Congress, confirmed that the current legal framework leaves creators without meaningful protection against AI training on their work — and endorsed legislation to fix it.

She's still in her job, for now, because the Supreme Court refused to let the administration bypass the lower courts' reinstatement. The question of what copyright actually means in the AI era is still being fought in about 100 active lawsuits, in Congress, and in the courts. The Copyright Office's position — nuanced, expert, protective of creator interests — remains part of that fight. That matters.

On July 2, President Trump posted a video on Truth Social in which he plays "Dr. Trump," a physician treating celebrities for what he calls "Trump Derangement Syndrome." The celebrities in the video — Rosie O'Donnell, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Roberts, John Leguizamo, and Edward Norton — are AI-generated deepfakes saying things like "I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I was constantly angry. I made everyone miserable around me." None of them consented. None of them authorized it. None of them said any of it.

Legal experts quoted by Deadline described a "wave of litigation" as likely. Let's look at what they actually have to work with.

Right of publicity

Every one of these celebrities has a right of publicity — the right to control commercial use of their name, voice, and likeness. Right of publicity law varies by state, but California (where most of them work and live) has some of the strongest protections in the country.

The core question is whether the video constitutes a "commercial use." Trump's team will argue it's political satire — protected expression, not a product endorsement. That's not a frivolous argument. Courts have long protected political satire under the First Amendment, even when it uses real people's likenesses without consent. The harder question is whether AI-generated deepfakes of private individuals falsely endorsing a product (even a fictional one like "TDS treatment") cross the line from satire into something actionable.

Lanham Act false endorsement

This is potentially the stronger claim. The Lanham Act — the federal trademark statute — prohibits false endorsements: using someone's name or likeness in a way that falsely implies they endorse a product or service. The video depicts recognizable celebrities appearing to endorse "Dr. Trump's" treatment. That's exactly the structure of a false endorsement claim, regardless of whether the intent was satirical.

The distinction from pure satire: the video isn't obviously mocking the celebrities or holding them up to ridicule. It depicts them appearing to agree with Trump and benefit from his "treatment." A viewer who doesn't know it's fake might genuinely believe these people said these things. That confusion is the heart of a Lanham Act false endorsement theory.

Defamation

Harder to win, but worth noting. Depicting someone making statements they never made — particularly statements that could be embarrassing or reputation-damaging — can support a defamation claim if the statements are presented in a way that a reasonable viewer could mistake for real. The video's satirical framing may defeat this, but it's in the mix.

What the NO FAKES Act would change

Last week we covered the NO FAKES Act advancing out of Senate Judiciary unanimously. Deadline's coverage of the Trump video noted the irony directly: the entertainment industry has been pushing for exactly this legislation, and here's the most visible possible demonstration of why it's needed, posted by the person who would sign it into law.

Under the NO FAKES Act as drafted, the Trump video would likely fall within the parody and political commentary exclusions — the bill's sponsors were careful to preserve First Amendment space for satire. Senate Judiciary Chairman Ted Cruz raised this issue explicitly during the committee markup, and the exclusions were confirmed. So the bill wouldn't necessarily have stopped this specific video.

What it would do is create a federal right and a notice-and-takedown mechanism for the thousands of non-presidential deepfakes that happen every day to people who can't afford to sue — the ordinary creators, musicians, and business owners whose likenesses are stolen and used in ways they never authorized, for products they'd never endorse, by people who face no consequences under current law.

The celebrities in Trump's video have resources and lawyers. Most people whose likenesses get cloned by AI don't. That's the gap the NO FAKES Act is designed to close — and this week's news just made the argument for it harder to dismiss.

See you next time,

Hank

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