AI and License Agreements

Recommendations for AI regulations

The handout provides a compact overview of the legal permissions and prohibitions regarding text and data mining (TDM) and artificial intelligence (AI) under German law and offers recommendations for the contractual design of license agreements.

A task force set up for this purpose as part of the Alliance's focus on “Digitality in Science” has developed recommendations for people who negotiate license agreements with publication service providers or have to work with these agreements in libraries. The aim is to reduce uncertainties regarding the topic of “artificial intelligence” in license agreements with regard to the mandatory legal framework and thus contribute to a science-friendly design of relevant regulations.

The authors of this guide recommend, among other things, that the legal analysis should not focus on “artificial intelligence” as such, but instead on the specific actions of the users that are to be permitted or prohibited by the license agreements.

The English version of the guide wil be available on Zenodo soon. In the meantime please have a look at the German language version (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13837664).