Winners of CUBE Innovators Competition Use AI for Music Copyright Cases

Christopher Aranguren ‘18 and Joseph Santiago ’18 were the winners of the 5th annual Innovators Competition on April 12, sponsored by Brooklyn Law School’s Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE).

The team took first place for its artificial intelligence (AI) program “Taurus,” which is aimed at helping litigants test copyright infringement in music. The inspiration for creating the program came from the challenge litigants face in these cases without a set procedure for juries to determine if songs are similar.

“There is a problem with how juries find songs similar — it is kind of random, and often, cases have to go all the way to trial because it's hard for litigants to figure out if they have a winning case,” Santiago told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “This is a machine learning [artificial intelligence] project that learns user input and tries to predict what jurors are likely to determine.”

Judges for this year’s competition were Robert Manne ’77, CUBE Entrepreneur in Residence, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Ultimate Software Group; Scott Stuart ’87, Founder & Co-CEO at Esquify; Andy Sturner ’90, Founder and Chairman of Aquamarine Partners; Lori Anne Wardi ’92, Vice President at NeuStar; Dimitri Nemerovsky '00, Founder of Vida and SolidX; and Lili Rogowskiy’16, Founder of Rogowsky Law.

The Innovation Competition is modeled after the popular TV show “Shark Tank,” where five teams of students present entrepreneurial ventures to a panel of judges who pose questions on the legal, social, and business implications of each project. The top three teams split a $4,500 prize that was donated to CUBE by the Nancy and Stanley M. Grossman CUBE Fellowship Fund.

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