Policy Proposal · January 2026

Proposal for an EU-wide centralised TDM Reservation Repository

Responding to the EC public consultation on protocols for reserving rights from text and data mining under the AI Act and the GPAI Code of Practice, we, CLAIMS, propose what we consider the most effective solution for TDM reservation declarations: an EU-wide centralised TDM Reservation Repository operated by the EUIPO, drawing on its experience with intellectual property registers.

Addressed to European Commission (EC) & EUIPO

Submitted by CLAIMS

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The EU created the legal right to opt out of TDM through Article 4(3) and established in the AI Act additional legal obligations to respect that right. What remains missing is the practical infrastructure to exercise the right and verify compliance.

The EUIPO study observes that while multiple TDM solutions exist, none has achieved the market position, verification authority, or long-term stability that rightsholders and TDM users require. Every private solution analyzed operates under commercial incentives that may diverge from EU policy objectives.

What the market cannot provide is:

Identity Verification

Authoritative identity verification with legal standing

Independence

Commercial independence from AI industry interests

Permanence

Guaranteed long-term operation regardless of business viability

Regulatory Force

Mandatory respect through regulatory obligation

The EUIPO TDM Reservation Repository would complete this framework using technologies the market has already validated, combined with institutional authority that only a public body can provide.

Introduction

In January 2026, there is still no consensus among rightsholders and TDM users on what constitutes an appropriate and workable TDM reservation solution. Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 has triggered a variety of legal and technical opt-out mechanisms, but none has achieved the level of clarity, reliability, and market uptake needed to function as a de facto standard across sectors.

The EUIPO study on development of generative artificial intelligence from a copyright perspective ('EUIPO study') reports stakeholder proposals for public authorities to implement a federated database that aggregates TDM reservation information from multiple primary sources, with each entity retaining control over its own database while adhering to common synchronisation standards.

We respectfully disagree that a federated database is a sufficient step forward towards a single standard solution respected and used by most rightsholders and TDM users. The federated architecture does not address the fundamental problem of current market solutions: commercial dependencies that undermine long-term reliability. Private registry operators, however well-intentioned, must pursue market adoption and revenue sustainability. Their continued operation depends on commercial viability, not a public mandate. A rightsholder registering TDM reservations requires confidence that the registry will exist and be respected for the full duration of copyright protection. Private operators cannot credibly guarantee such permanence. The implementation of a federated database would only create a more organised version of the current fragmented landscape, not a qualitative improvement.

The appropriate solution should be centralised and supported by regulation. Only public infrastructure operated by an EU institution such as the EUIPO can deliver a stable solution that is not commercially dependent and is integrated into the regulatory framework, ensuring trust in the long-term viability of such a solution.

Why This Is Urgent

The need for a centralised, regulatory-backed solution is not a long-term goal but an urgent priority, for three reasons:

1 AI developers are investing unprecedented resources to ensure that their use of works for training is lawful;
2 Copyright holders are increasingly enforcing their rights in court;
3 The EU framework is becoming more complex, but practical compliance is not improving because the legal landscape is not matched by simple, workable compliance measures.

Taking this into account, and in light of the existing TDM reservation solutions on the market, the introduction of an EU-wide centralised TDM reservation system operated by the EUIPO, drawing on its experience with intellectual property registers, would be timely.

Current Practice of the TDM Reservations

Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 requires that TDM reservations be expressed "in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in the case of content made publicly available online".

The EUIPO study confirms that so far no single opt-out mechanism has emerged as a standard. Instead, all stakeholders rely on fragmented legal and technical measures, each with distinct limitations.

Legal Measures

Legal measures identified in the EUIPO study include unilateral declarations, licensing constraints, and website terms and conditions. These mechanisms are appropriate as the TDM reservation mechanism but share two fundamental and critical weaknesses:

Limited discoverability for TDM users, leaving highly disputable the assessment of it as an expression made in an appropriate manner to create the legal consequences;
Vulnerability to circumvention via unmarked copies, since TDM users can obtain the same work from a source where the TDM reservation is not indicated.

These drawbacks are, with varying degrees of success, addressed by technical measures.

Technical Measures

Technical measures assessed by the EUIPO study include:

Robots Exclusion Protocol (robots.txt), which is widely adopted but not well suited for expressing TDM reservations; and
TDM Reservation Protocol (TDMRep), the C2PA Content Authenticity Initiative, Spawning.ai solutions, the Liccium and Valunode infrastructures, which, while well suited as TDM reservation mechanisms, depend on complex and expensive infrastructure to build, maintain, and fund.

This leads to the conclusion that the real persisting issue with the effective implementation of the TDM reservation does not lie in technical feasibility but instead stems from adoption and funding problems.

In our opinion, this market problem can be solved by the introduction of an EU-wide centralised TDM reservation platform provided by the EUIPO and promoted via voluntary compliance mechanisms.

The Proposed TDM Reservation Repository

The proposed TDM Reservation Repository is a centralized, EU-level service that enables:

rightsholders to express and manage their TDM reservations in a simple and reliable manner, and
TDM users and courts to verify those reservations in a single authoritative place.

Single Point of Registration

Requires no technical expertise from creators or rightsholders. An individual photographer, a small publishing house, or a major music label can all access the same straightforward interface.

Machine-Readable Outputs

Generates outputs in every format that GPAI providers might query: ISCC-based soft-bound declarations, robots.txt, C2PA-compatible manifests, TDMRep headers, and structured API responses.

Identity Verification

Applies EUIPO's established verification procedures, the same processes used for trademark and design registration, ensuring only actual rightsholders can register.

Timestamped Records

Every TDM record carries a timestamp. When a dispute arises, the rightsholder can prove precisely when the reservation took effect and what it covered.

Description from Different Perspectives

For Copyright Holders

The repository provides a single point of registration that requires no technical expertise from creators or rightsholders. An individual photographer, a small publishing house, or a major music label can all access the same straightforward interface.

To register a TDM reservation declaration, the rightsholder or its representative uploads a reference copy of the work and describes it in plain language: what the work is, who created it, and what TDM permissions or restrictions apply. The rightsholder can express the scope of the TDM reservation in natural language, using ordinary terms with no need to learn protocol syntax, generate metadata files, or configure server responses.

The system handles all technical transformation.

For TDM Users

From the rightsholder's natural language declaration, the repository generates machine-readable outputs in every format that GPAI providers and other TDM users might query: ISCC-based soft-bound declarations, robots.txt, C2PA-compatible manifests, TDMRep headers, and structured API responses.

In contrast to federated databases, the proposed database will itself apply unified technical protocols and metadata, rather than merely extracting such information from third-party databases.

The repository offers a single query point where TDM users can verify the TDM status of recorded works. Query responses are machine-readable. The repository returns clear, structured data: this work is registered by this verified rightsholder, with this TDM status, effective from this timestamp, subject to these conditions. There is no room for interpretation disputes about whether a natural language statement constitutes an "appropriate" reservation or whether the format satisfies the "machine-readable" requirement.

A GPAI provider or other TDM user that queries the repository and respects the responses it receives can document that compliance through timestamped query logs. A provider that does not query the repository assumes the risk that works in its training data were subject to reservations it failed to identify.

For Courts and Other Dispute Resolution Authorities

Identity verification ensures that only the actual rightsholder or an authorized representative can register a work. The repository applies EUIPO's established verification procedures, the same processes used for trademark and design registration.

Every TDM record carries a timestamp. When a dispute arises, the rightsholder can prove precisely when the reservation took effect and what it covered. For retroactive declarations, where the rightsholder claims to have expressed reservations earlier through other means (such as robots.txt configurations or website terms), the repository can record the claimed prior date alongside supporting evidence such as Internet Archive snapshots, allowing courts to assess the evidentiary weight while still providing an authoritative reference point.

For EUIPO

The repository advances EUIPO's Strategic Plan 2030 commitment to strengthen the IP ecosystem in response to technological developments such as generative AI. The Plan explicitly calls for developing new solutions that support both innovation and copyright protection.

EUIPO already operates large-scale registration systems for EU trademarks, registered Community designs, and geographical indications. The Office has decades of experience verifying applicant identity and maintaining authoritative registers.

Finally, the repository completes work that the Commission itself initiated. The ISCC standard, which provides the technical foundation for content-derived identification, was developed with European Commission support beginning in 2016 and is now published as ISO 24138:2024.

Building an official centralised registry on this Commission-funded technology ensures institutional continuity by providing infrastructure for exercising EU legal rights, based on EU-supported technical standards and operated by an EU agency with proven capability.

Characteristics and Technical Feasibility

The following shows how each characteristic described above, from the perspective of each actor, can be ensured through the adoption of existing technologies. Key characteristics of the proposed solution include:

Characteristic	Technical Feasibility
Operates at the level of the copyrighted work itself, not at the level of specific files or hosting locations.	ISCC soft-binding method (Liccium) ORDE (Valunode) fingerprints stored in the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure
Operates regardless of the content type, including offline content.	Majority of existing solutions
Supports the full spectrum of Article 4(3) reservations, from complete TDM prohibition to nuanced conditional permissions.	C2PA TDM Assertions JPEG Trust Core Foundation v.2 TDM.ai protocol (Liccium) Open Rights Data Exchange fingerprinting (Valunode)
High robustness is ensured because the repository record exists independently of any particular file.	ISCC soft-binding method (Liccium) ORDE (Valunode) fingerprints stored in the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure
Every registration carries a timestamp establishing when the TDM reservation was declared.	Majority of existing solutions
Supports retroactive claims with evidence.	Repository-based nature of the solution
Builds on EUIPO's decades of experience verifying identities for trademark and design registration.	EUIPO-supported registers
Operates as public infrastructure under EU institutional governance, free from commercial dependencies that could compromise neutrality or long-term availability.	EU institutional framework
Requires no technical expertise from rightsholders to use for TDM reservation.	EUIPO-supported registers