Insights

Paolo Fortina joins Fabrizio Campanelli and Vito Lo Re to discuss artificial intelligence, music and copyright. A Scoring for Films video conversation in Italian.

For some time now, the question has belonged to more than science fiction: could artificial intelligence eventually wipe us out? Some researchers believe that the risk of a future loss of control cannot be ruled out; others consider these scenarios too speculative and point out that AI already presents much more tangible problems. It is a serious debate. Yet perhaps the very image of annihilation prevents us from seeing a less spectacular possibility—one that, to me at least,

When a car reaches the end of its life, the common perception is simple: it is no longer useful, so it has become a cost. Take it to a dismantler, remove it from Italy’s Public Vehicle Register (PRA), and close the matter. Economically and legally, however, that car is far from “finished”. It may still contain an engine, a gearbox, control units, headlights, doors, electronic components, steel, aluminium, copper and recoverable plastics. More recent vehicles also contain batt

A guide to drafting, validity and challenges. A handwritten will may seem simple: paper, pen, date and signature. Yet its apparent simplicity can give rise to mistakes, ambiguity and disputes between heirs. This book offers practical guidance on drafting the document, understanding the requirements for its validity and identifying the circumstances in which a will may need to be interpreted, disputed or challenged. Paolo Fortina · Officina Giuridica · ISBN 9798250445368 Read

A practical guide to drafting, negotiating and enforcing brand licences. Licensing is where a trade mark becomes a business model: products, agreements, royalties, quality control, liability and litigation. This book is a practical manual for professionals, businesses, licensors and licensees. It examines contract structure, scope of use, territory, duration, exclusivity, sublicensing, royalties, minimum guarantees, audits, trade mark protection, partner selection and managin

This morning, during a funeral, something occurred to me: a symbol is one of humanity’s most powerful constructions and, at the same time, one of its most fragile. The two qualities are not contradictory. They probably stem from the same reason. A symbol concentrates an enormous amount of meaning in something materially modest. A cross is a basic geometric shape, a flag a piece of fabric, a wedding ring a small band of metal. Yet they can represent a religion, a homeland or a

From the individual claim to the financial statements: why an estimate that fails to follow the risk can cost far more than the file containing it. Take an €800,000 claim. Liability is uncertain, the amount sought decidedly ambitious and the file still young, but somebody must put a value on it, so the insurer establishes a €200,000 reserve. Simply put, the reserve is an estimate of the claim’s ultimate cost. It is not the amount the claimant demands, nor necessarily what the

On 19 November 2025, the Rome Court filed a judgment that, given the right headline, seems straight out of a 1980s science-fiction film: a worker dismissed because artificial intelligence had replaced her. Judgment No. 9135 attracted extensive media and legal attention, with coverage by Corriere, Repubblica, Sky and Il Sole 24 Ore, and lengthy discussion among employment lawyers and trade unions. For a few weeks on LinkedIn, it seemed Skynet had found its own trusted employme

On 12 August 2022, a Beneteau Oceanis Clipper 321, a 32.6-foot cruising sailing yacht measuring 9.95 metres and displacing approximately 4.4 tonnes, ran aground in the bay of San Vito Lo Capo. Weather conditions had driven it into shallow water; its keel was embedded in sand a few metres from shore and it could no longer move under its own power. Following contact with the harbour authorities, a fishing vessel intervened and refloated it. The story might have ended with a han

Astrology, prejudice and the right to choose badly Hiring someone? I would steer clear of Pisces. Creative, intuitive, sensitive, certainly. But if the accounts need closing or a deadline must be met, I would look for something more solid. A Capricorn, for example: methodical, ambitious, reliable, practical, naturally inclined to regard work as something that ought, if possible, to get done. For methodological transparency, I should disclose that I am a Capricorn. It would ha

Baptism, leaving the Church and the peculiar accounting of faith A few days ago, the Centro Studi Livatino published an interesting article entitled “The Church’s Right Not to Forget”, discussing formal departure from the Church and Case C-12/25, Bisdom Gent, currently pending before the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Stripped to its essentials, the case is this. Someone baptised as a child leaves the Catholic Church as an adult and asks for thei

In 1748, Montesquieu devoted a chapter of The Spirit of the Laws to the enslavement of Black people and chose a rather unusual approach: he took the slaveholders’ side. Or at least pretended to. “If I had to defend our right to enslave Black people,” he wrote, these would be my reasons. The first was almost bureaucratic. Europeans had exterminated the peoples of America and therefore had to import people from Africa to cultivate land left without labourers. The phrase “had to

To build Claude, Anthropic needed books. Not a few thousand, but millions. The simplest way to obtain them was to buy them. The fastest was to download them. Anthropic did both, and that apparently mundane distinction produced one of the most interesting copyright decisions AI has yet brought us. Between 2021 and 2022, Anthropic assembled a digital library of almost unimaginable size. Federal Judge William Alsup found that it downloaded 196,640 books from Books3, at least fiv

It began with a connection I had never made: the English words “infantry” and “infant” share an origin. This is no vague resemblance. Both trace back to Latin infans, combining the negative prefix in- with fari: to speak, say or utter. Infans therefore literally means someone who does not speak—or, more precisely, cannot yet utter a fully recognisable word. It is significant that Romans defined children not by smallness, fragility or dependence on adults, but by what they cou

Prompt injection in court documents: when invisible text tries to manipulate proceedings Something happened in Brazil that, at first glance, seems almost ridiculous. Lawyers filed a court document containing, alongside ordinary submissions, a sentence in white type on a white background. It was effectively invisible to a human reader. To an AI system analysing the document, however, it could be perfectly readable. Its substance was a command to the machine: “Attention, artifi

If I see a red-haired environmentalist drag queen called “Pattie Gonia”, do I really think I am looking at an official Patagonia product line? The question may sound provocative, yet it lies at the heart of US litigation between Patagonia, one of the world’s best-known outdoor brands, and Pattie Gonia, the stage persona of climate activist and performer Wyn Wiley. Patagonia alleges that “Pattie Gonia” infringes its trade mark rights. It seeks symbolic damages of one dollar, b

There is a reassuring account of civil proceedings, familiar from textbooks: the judge advances through logical steps, almost like a mathematician. Facts are alleged, evidence supports them, legal rules classify them, and the decision emerges as a necessary conclusion. A linear path leaving nothing to chance. In this account, Article 115 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure is a firm foundation, requiring decisions to rest on proven and uncontested facts. Its simplicity has

Archive commentary on the 2017 Competition Bill. This translation preserves the legislative stage discussed in the original article. Article 13 of the 2017 Competition Bill, approved by the Senate, proposed amending Decree-Law No. 138 of 13 August 2011, specifically Article 3(5)(e). As amended, it would read as follows, with additions in capitals: This is therefore not the ten-year run-off cover already provided, for example, by the implementing rules for lawyers’ insurance

Archive analysis of Italian case law from 2016–2017. The translation preserves the original argument and historical legal context; it is not an update on subsequent developments. Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, Joint Divisions, No. 9140, 6 May 2016 Milan Court, No. 7149, 17 June 2016 Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, Third Civil Division, No. 10506, 28 April 2017 Udine Court, No. 613, 3 May 2017 CONTENTS: 1. Claims-made clauses as insurers’ solution to reserving uncert

Archive article. This English version preserves the original discussion of artists’ contracts and resale rights in its historical context. From a strictly economic perspective, an artist—with some exceptions—might be described as an unproductive worker, since their work rarely produces a positive economic exchange. Viewed differently, so few artists achieve recognition that the sporting expression “the winner takes it all” seems justified. Artistic activity and the decision t