Permit us to make a prediction.
In 5 years, the foremost music corporations is not going to solely be scouring the net for AI infringement, they may also be issuing authorized letters on to the perpetrators… utilizing AI.
Sound far-fetched? It isn’t. It’s sitting inside a pair of patent purposes printed by the US Patent and Trademark Workplace on February 12, 2026.
MBW unearthed the filings whereas researching our current story on the patent portfolio being constructed by Music IP Holdings, the entity shaped final 12 months by means of Common Music Group‘s partnership with IP asset administration agency Liquidax Capital.
That earlier story reviewed three filings within the portfolio masking multi-stage approval and managed distribution of AI-generated by-product works. Nashville-headquartered MIH has stated it holds “greater than 60 protected improvements with quite a few further expertise households and portfolios below improvement.”
The 2 filings we’re taking a look at right here look like a part of that broader portfolio.
Titled “Media Rights Platform Programs and Strategies” and bearing publication numbers US 20260044581 A1 and 20260044583 A1, they record Music IP Holdings as sole applicant and Daniel Drolet, Liquidax’s founder and MIH’s Chairman and CEO, as sole inventor. That may be a totally different sample from the by-product works filings lined in our earlier piece, which embody UMG staffers Chris Horton, Jeremy Uzan, and Sion Elliott among the many co-inventors.
Each filings had been lodged with the USPTO on October 16, 2025. As with the sooner derivative-works filings, neither MIH nor UMG has publicly disclosed whether or not or once they intend to deploy or license the expertise described, or to whom.
What the filings describe is a sprawling end-to-end “media rights platform” that sits between rightsholders, generative AI techniques, and the top customers who wish to immediate AI to create by-product works from copyrighted music. But it surely’s the enforcement equipment bolted onto the platform that ought to make AI companies take discover.
4 elements of the filings stand out, plus a fifth that borrows from a playbook the reside live performance ticketing enterprise already is aware of nicely.
1. A licensing chatbot that plugs immediately into ChatGPT, Claude and others
On the coronary heart of the filings is a system referred to as the “Copyright Licensing Chatbot” (referred to within the patents as part 190), described as an “agent” or “plugin” that plugs immediately into current massive language mannequin platforms – the filings explicitly name-check ChatGPT and Bard, but in addition reference Anthropic’s Claude 2, Google‘s LaMDA and PaLM, Hugging Face’s BLOOM, Nvidia’s NeMo, XLNet, Cohere and others.
The bot is designed to interrogate potential licensees about business vs. non-commercial use, timeframe, and geographical scope earlier than both clearing or escalating the request.
The filings state that the chatbot “questions the potential licensee on various utilization attributes to establish each the suitable licensing fashions and to verify that the proposed utilization of the content material is aligned with the artist’s rules and general necessities that have to be met earlier than their materials shall be licensed and utilized in a by-product work.”
Threat profiling is dealt with by machine studying fashions skilled on historic licensing information and infringement patterns. Low-risk, non-commercial queries will be cleared in-conversation. Excessive-risk requests get escalated to people.
2. An AI crawler that hunts infringement – and sends its personal cease-and-desists
That is the piece that may matter most for MBW readers.
The filings describe what they name an “LLM Agent Copyright Crawler” – a system that “works throughout the Web and interacts with Copyrighted By-product Content material created by Customers of LLM’s”.
The filings describe the crawler as sampling content material streams from the open net, detecting digital watermarks embedded in photographs and audio utilizing machine studying, and cross-referencing that materials in opposition to IP licenses “at the moment in drive”.
The filings are specific about what the agent does when it finds a mis-match.
The filings state that the “LLM Agent” can join immediately with a supply of supplies and “suggest licensing phrases”; it will probably thank customers for having “correctly licensed utilization”; and – critically – it will probably ship “a number of stop and desist letters to consumer or streamer”. It could actually additionally flag the utilization for “human authorized intervention”.
That’s, functionally, a blueprint for agentic copyright enforcement. A bot that, as described within the filings, would discover infringement, assess threat, and subject authorized correspondence, with human attorneys concerned solely as an escalation tier.
3. An AI mannequin of the rightsholder that predicts whether or not they’d say sure
The platform additionally consists of an AI Modeling System (part 180) that fashions the copyright proprietor themselves, utilizing machine studying skilled on “historic licensing choices, authorized precedents, and copyright holder conduct patterns”.
The aim: to foretell, earlier than a by-product work is ever created, whether or not the rightsholder would approve it.
The filings describe the system as “approving creation of the by-product work in response to the modeling predicting that the proprietor would approve the request.” By-product work creation is then accepted or declined on the premise of that prediction.
4. Digital watermarking and fingerprinting to hint each AI-generated observe
Underpinning the entire system as described is a Digital Watermarking System (part 170) utilizing unfold spectrum, quantization-based, remodel area, and perceptual watermarking methods.
Paired with it’s a “digital fingerprinting engine” designed to detect the signatures of particular generative AI fashions – what the filings name “GAI-MC” fingerprints, described as “distinctive byte sequences generated by particular AI mannequin architectures”.
The filings describe the system as figuring out “which LLM and music aligned software program created the copyright derivatives with the intention to establish what number of derivatives had been created, how a lot cash is owed, how a lot worth was used to coach the LLMs with the intention to create the derivatives.”
5. A dynamic pricing engine for AI music licenses
Maybe most intriguingly, the filings describe a dynamic pricing engine that adjusts licensing prices in actual time “primarily based on demand, seasonality and market circumstances” utilizing reinforcement studying methods to repeatedly optimize pricing primarily based on “conversion charges, buyer lifetime worth, and market penetration targets”.
The system is designed to mannequin worth elasticity of demand, analyze competitor pricing, and outline “dynamic pricing guidelines and algorithms that modify costs in real-time primarily based on demand indicators, stock ranges, competitor pricing, and buyer segmentation”.
The filings even ponder the system “dynamically adjusting approval standards primarily based on market elements, demand patterns, and seasonality,” that means not simply the value of a license might flex in actual time, however whether or not a license is granted in any respect.
The filings counsel this is able to be paired with personalised subscription plans, bundle choices, loyalty rewards, and tiered pricing for AI music licensees – a mannequin that, to MBW’s eye, at the very least, seems loads much less like conventional music licensing and much more just like the demand-based dynamic pricing already acquainted from the reside live performance ticketing enterprise, utilized to copyright permissions.
The paperwork aren’t merchandise. They’re patent purposes. They might by no means ship within the kind described, and patent claims usually stretch wider than what will get constructed. As with the remainder of MIH’s portfolio, UMG and MIH haven’t publicly disclosed their business plans for the expertise.
However the filings inform us one thing about the place UMG and its patent-licensing accomplice imagine the trade is heading, and the extent of automation they’re making ready to assert IP rights over.
For AI companies already combating lawsuits from main labels, the route of journey is evident sufficient. Immediately, the cease-and-desist letter is drafted by a lawyer at Latham & Watkins or King & Spalding. Tomorrow, on this blueprint, it may very well be drafted and despatched by a bot.
5 years, we stated. We’ll examine again.Music Enterprise Worldwide
