November 20. 2025
2nd or 3rd Inning?: Takeaways From the 2025 Mayer Brown AI Summit in Los Angeles
Related People:
Generate PDF
To read complete article visit Law.com
On Sept. 18, Mayer Brown hosted its second annual AI Summit in Los Angeles, which featured special keynote speaker California State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) and focused on topics such as AI governance, AI and antitrust, intellectual property, contracting for AI and security challenges.
Litigation Daily caught up with four Mayer Brown partners and summit panelists—John Nadolenco, John Mancini, Philip Recht and Arsen Kourinian—in the weeks afterward to hear their takeaways about the next wave of AI litigation and why California is uniquely positioned to lead the charge on legislating the ever-evolving regulatory landscape around AI.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Lit Daily: The first Mayer Brown AI Summit was held in Chicago last year. What prompted the firm’s decision to move the location to Los Angeles in 2025?
Philip Recht: We did it in California this time because it's the epicenter of the legislative activity and it’s the epicenter of the industry.
60-plus percent of the AI companies are headquartered in California, and there [are] more AI employees here in California than anywhere else. But beyond that, California was the appropriate place because, if you look at legislation and how the industry is being regulated ... California is the center of it. And it is very similar to what happened in the privacy world.
California enacted the first major state privacy law—[the California Consumer Privacy Act]. As in the AI case, there was no federal privacy law at the time. To the extent other states were looking at the issue, they were not taking it on in a fulsome way. California enacted this comprehensive data privacy law. It's been amended any number of times since. But what it did is set the trend for other states in the country to enact privacy laws themselves. And it became the de facto national standard. And you have very much the same thing happening in the AI world.
If you look at the current makeup of Congress, for the same reasons that Congress was unable and has been unable for years now to act in the privacy world, it's almost certainly unable to act in the AI world. The bodies are just too closely divided to reach a consensus, so in the absence of that, the states are going to act.
[California has] a smart activist legislature, and as present facts show, it's taking the lead. Unless the feds take some action, what California does is probably going to lead the nation.
And I think you’re going to see other states, just like in the privacy world, pick up and follow the lead of California.
John [Mancini], you were a speaker on the Intellectual Property panel. What themes emerged from your discussion about the future of IP litigation in the AI industry?
Mancini: A little while ago, there was this sense in the marketplace that maybe the IP cases had plateaued and that there was this general understanding that, likely, there would be finding the fact that this was fair use. But boy, did that change with the [Bartz v. Anthropic] case.
So now a lot of what we talked about in our panel, and a key takeaway is, how long is this going to be around? What are the risks for other companies? And really trying to parse through which companies are at risk, which ones [are] not, because there’s certainly a different factual pattern at play in the Anthropic case than for many other entities.
Six months ago, maybe, there was a sense that they've plateaued. But I think, as you've seen the last few weeks with cases being filed pretty regularly now, the situation has changed. And while we once may have thought we were in the eighth inning, some people are saying we're probably just in the second or third now.
You are going to see a considerable amount of activity in the intellectual property realm. The number of cases just filed in the last few weeks since the Anthropic settlement was put into the fray are evidence of that. I think you'll start to see, maybe, even a split of authority amongst the circuits. I think you're going to see some challenges amongst the states trying to protect either interests of individuals or interests of copyright holders against what is at least a national concern to make sure that our national AI companies are not at a competitive disadvantage.
What issues—after IP— do you expect to be part of the next “waves” of litigation to target the AI industry?
Arsen Kourinian: One area where there's been AI regulation is conference recording. A video conference recording tool [records] a conversation and AI transcribes it for you and also gives takeaways and action items from it. And there's been a wave of—not only in the AI context, but in other situations such as cookies on websites—where they've been claiming that it constitutes, allegedly, wiretapping when you're engaging in these recording and AI transcription processes. So I think that's one area of litigation.
The other area of litigation that may arise is if the chatbot or AI system causes harm to individuals under product liability theories—another area that may potentially evolve into being a very litigious area.
What stood out to you about the keynote address presented by California Senator Tom Umberg?
John Nadolenco: Senator Umberg basically just flat-out said, “Look, in the absence of federal legislation, California intends to fill that void and introduce bills that try to regulate various aspects of AI governance.” He has heard complaints of, "Well, California doesn't get to set a national standard.” But his view certainly was, “Okay, that's probably true, but a lot of times when California legislates, other states follow and will de facto adopt those standards." So, he has been particularly active, and I think California's legislature as a whole has been particularly active on those measures.
Mancini: The senator himself acknowledged some of the legislation was actually vetoed by the California governor. So, there is a bit of a dynamic in California where it is also the place where this country's leading tech providers are in competitive races with China and others. Yet the legislature is putting forward some laws that could be, if not an impediment, at least a bump in the road in terms of the advancement of their technology.
Some of that is a little bit inconsistent with what seems to be the prevailing case law coming out of most courts, leaving aside what happened with Anthropic, that it's fair use. So, it is really interesting—the internal battles that California's dealing with itself, trying to manage the growth of its tech companies, yet trying to protect both information belonging to copyrighted holders, as well as protect public interest.
But you're going to see, probably, some challenges to these laws, probably some attempts to finally force federal legislation to supplant the field. Certainly, if California passes some of the laws, you might see Congress start to get involved to federalize these issues because of either the national security concerns or, simply, the concerns about the hindrance that we might cause to some of our tech companies that are leaders in this space.
Litigation Daily caught up with four Mayer Brown partners and summit panelists—John Nadolenco, John Mancini, Philip Recht and Arsen Kourinian—in the weeks afterward to hear their takeaways about the next wave of AI litigation and why California is uniquely positioned to lead the charge on legislating the ever-evolving regulatory landscape around AI.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Lit Daily: The first Mayer Brown AI Summit was held in Chicago last year. What prompted the firm’s decision to move the location to Los Angeles in 2025?
Philip Recht: We did it in California this time because it's the epicenter of the legislative activity and it’s the epicenter of the industry.
60-plus percent of the AI companies are headquartered in California, and there [are] more AI employees here in California than anywhere else. But beyond that, California was the appropriate place because, if you look at legislation and how the industry is being regulated ... California is the center of it. And it is very similar to what happened in the privacy world.
California enacted the first major state privacy law—[the California Consumer Privacy Act]. As in the AI case, there was no federal privacy law at the time. To the extent other states were looking at the issue, they were not taking it on in a fulsome way. California enacted this comprehensive data privacy law. It's been amended any number of times since. But what it did is set the trend for other states in the country to enact privacy laws themselves. And it became the de facto national standard. And you have very much the same thing happening in the AI world.
If you look at the current makeup of Congress, for the same reasons that Congress was unable and has been unable for years now to act in the privacy world, it's almost certainly unable to act in the AI world. The bodies are just too closely divided to reach a consensus, so in the absence of that, the states are going to act.
[California has] a smart activist legislature, and as present facts show, it's taking the lead. Unless the feds take some action, what California does is probably going to lead the nation.
And I think you’re going to see other states, just like in the privacy world, pick up and follow the lead of California.
John [Mancini], you were a speaker on the Intellectual Property panel. What themes emerged from your discussion about the future of IP litigation in the AI industry?
Mancini: A little while ago, there was this sense in the marketplace that maybe the IP cases had plateaued and that there was this general understanding that, likely, there would be finding the fact that this was fair use. But boy, did that change with the [Bartz v. Anthropic] case.
So now a lot of what we talked about in our panel, and a key takeaway is, how long is this going to be around? What are the risks for other companies? And really trying to parse through which companies are at risk, which ones [are] not, because there’s certainly a different factual pattern at play in the Anthropic case than for many other entities.
Six months ago, maybe, there was a sense that they've plateaued. But I think, as you've seen the last few weeks with cases being filed pretty regularly now, the situation has changed. And while we once may have thought we were in the eighth inning, some people are saying we're probably just in the second or third now.
You are going to see a considerable amount of activity in the intellectual property realm. The number of cases just filed in the last few weeks since the Anthropic settlement was put into the fray are evidence of that. I think you'll start to see, maybe, even a split of authority amongst the circuits. I think you're going to see some challenges amongst the states trying to protect either interests of individuals or interests of copyright holders against what is at least a national concern to make sure that our national AI companies are not at a competitive disadvantage.
What issues—after IP— do you expect to be part of the next “waves” of litigation to target the AI industry?
Arsen Kourinian: One area where there's been AI regulation is conference recording. A video conference recording tool [records] a conversation and AI transcribes it for you and also gives takeaways and action items from it. And there's been a wave of—not only in the AI context, but in other situations such as cookies on websites—where they've been claiming that it constitutes, allegedly, wiretapping when you're engaging in these recording and AI transcription processes. So I think that's one area of litigation.
The other area of litigation that may arise is if the chatbot or AI system causes harm to individuals under product liability theories—another area that may potentially evolve into being a very litigious area.
What stood out to you about the keynote address presented by California Senator Tom Umberg?
John Nadolenco: Senator Umberg basically just flat-out said, “Look, in the absence of federal legislation, California intends to fill that void and introduce bills that try to regulate various aspects of AI governance.” He has heard complaints of, "Well, California doesn't get to set a national standard.” But his view certainly was, “Okay, that's probably true, but a lot of times when California legislates, other states follow and will de facto adopt those standards." So, he has been particularly active, and I think California's legislature as a whole has been particularly active on those measures.
Mancini: The senator himself acknowledged some of the legislation was actually vetoed by the California governor. So, there is a bit of a dynamic in California where it is also the place where this country's leading tech providers are in competitive races with China and others. Yet the legislature is putting forward some laws that could be, if not an impediment, at least a bump in the road in terms of the advancement of their technology.
Some of that is a little bit inconsistent with what seems to be the prevailing case law coming out of most courts, leaving aside what happened with Anthropic, that it's fair use. So, it is really interesting—the internal battles that California's dealing with itself, trying to manage the growth of its tech companies, yet trying to protect both information belonging to copyrighted holders, as well as protect public interest.
But you're going to see, probably, some challenges to these laws, probably some attempts to finally force federal legislation to supplant the field. Certainly, if California passes some of the laws, you might see Congress start to get involved to federalize these issues because of either the national security concerns or, simply, the concerns about the hindrance that we might cause to some of our tech companies that are leaders in this space.
Relevante Kontakte
Stay Up To Date With Our Insights
See how we use a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to meet our clients' needs.
Subscribe