As AI-based tools are increasingly used to generate content and artwork, the question of whether such works qualify for copyright protection has become more pressing. In a recent ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision, rejecting Dr. Stephen Thaler’s application to register copyright in a work he claims was created entirely autonomously by an AI system he developed. The court clarified that U.S. copyright law is premised on the assumption that an author is a human being, and that there is no room to recognize a work lacking any human involvement as copyright-protected.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently affirmed the decision of the U.S. District Court, which rejected Dr. Stephen Thaler’s application to register copyright in the artwork “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.”
This is a well-known case that has drawn considerable attention in the intellectual property world. Dr. Stephen Thaler made several attempts, in different countries, to register copyright in a work titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” What made his application unique was that the image was created using an AI system he developed, called “The Creativity Machine.” In his filings, Thaler explicitly stated that the work was “created autonomously by a computer algorithm,” and sought to register the rights in the name of the Creativity Machine itself. The court recently held in the Thaler case that copyright has never been granted to a work that lacked any guiding human hand, adding that “human creativity is the sine qua non of copyright.”
The central question before the court was whether a work created entirely autonomously by an AI system is eligible for copyright protection.
The court held that U.S. copyright law requires human creation as a prerequisite for copyright protection, and that the term “author” refers exclusively to human beings. The court further noted that various provisions of the law – including those relating to the duration of copyright protection, inheritance, and the transfer of rights – are premised on the assumption that the author is a human being with human characteristics.
The court emphasized that the U.S. Copyright Office has consistently interpreted the term “author” for decades as referring only to human beings, and that subsequent amendments to the law reflect the adoption of this approach. The court also rejected Thaler’s argument that the term “author” should be interpreted more broadly, to include any entity that produces a work. The court clarified that corporations and other legal entities may be considered “authors” only when the work was originally created by a human being.
