THALER v. PERLMUTTER
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — Decided on 18 March 2025
COPYRIGHT ACT — Artificial intelligence — Computer-generated artistic work — Human authorship — Whether an artificial intelligence system can be recognised as author — Whether owner and operator of AI system entitled to copyright in autonomously generated work — Held, under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, copyrightable work must be authored in the first instance by a human being; an artificial intelligence system cannot be recognised as the sole author of a work — Copyright registration rightly refused where the applicant expressly identified the AI system as the sole author and represented that the work had been generated autonomously without human creative contribution — Applicant’s alternative claim that he was himself the author by reason of creating and using the system not considered on merits, having been waived before the administrative agency and not properly preserved on appeal — Appeal dismissed. (Paras. 1–8, 15–23)
COPYRIGHT — Original works of authorship — Human contribution — AI-assisted creation distinguished from autonomous machine generation — Held, requirement of human authorship does not prohibit copyright protection for every work produced with artificial intelligence; protection may be available where a human being is the author and the circumstances establish sufficient human creative contribution — Whether an AI-assisted work qualifies for protection depends upon the manner in which the tool operates and is used — Disputes concerning the extent of AI contribution to a particular work were not decided, the work in question having been expressly claimed as autonomously generated by the machine. (Paras. 9–14, 24–27)
COPYRIGHT — Authorship and ownership — Work made for hire — Artificial intelligence system claimed to be employee of applicant — Held, work-made-for-hire doctrine does not dispense with the threshold requirement that a copyrightable work must originate in human authorship; the doctrine cannot confer copyright in material that was never eligible for copyright protection — Claim rejected. (Paras. 28–31)
COPYRIGHT — Statutory interpretation — Meaning of “author” — Scheme and structure of Copyright Act of 1976 — Provisions concerning initial ownership, duration of copyright, inheritance, transfer and legal attributes of authorship — Held, read as a whole, the statutory scheme supports the conclusion that an author must be a human being; machines are treated as instruments used in the creative process and not as independent authors — Longstanding Copyright Office practice and the historical treatment of computer technology reinforced that construction. (Paras. 9–14)
COPYRIGHT — Judicial interpretation — Technological change — Scope of judicial power — Held, adaptation of copyright law to new technological developments must remain within the statutory framework; policy arguments for extending copyright to works generated autonomously by artificial intelligence are matters for legislative consideration and cannot, by themselves, justify a departure from the statute as interpreted by the Court. (Paras. 24–27)
Disposition: Appeal dismissed; denial of copyright registration affirmed.
I. Analysis of facts
1. Material facts
Dr. Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist, developed an artificial intelligence system called the “Creativity Machine”. The system autonomously generated an artistic image entitled A Recent Entrance to Paradise.
On 19 May 2019, Dr. Thaler applied to the United States Copyright Office for copyright registration. In the application, he identified the Creativity Machine as the sole author of the artwork and himself as its owner. He expressly described the work as having been created autonomously by the machine.
The Copyright Office rejected the application because the work lacked human authorship. The administrative reconsideration process did not alter that decision.
Dr. Thaler then sought judicial review. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the refusal of registration. He appealed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
2. Arguments and procedural complications
Dr. Thaler advanced three principal lines of argument:
The statutory requirement of human authorship was unsupported by the Copyright Act and was constitutionally objectionable.
He should be treated as the owner under the work-made-for-hire doctrine, contending that the AI system functioned as his employee.
He should himself qualify as the author because he had created and used the AI system.
The third argument encountered a decisive procedural obstacle. The appellate court held that the argument had been waived before the administrative agency and had not been adequately preserved on appeal. Consequently, the court did not determine its substantive merits.
The distinction is fundamental: the case concerned a work expressly claimed to have been generated autonomously by a machine, with the machine identified as the sole author. It was not a case in which the applicant had properly preserved and established a claim that the final expression embodied his own creative contribution.
II. Questions of law
The principal questions were:
Whether an artificial intelligence system can be recognised as the author of a copyrightable work under the United States Copyright Act of 1976.
Whether a person can obtain copyright in an autonomously generated work by claiming ownership of, or an employment relationship with, the AI system.
Whether the constitutional question concerning human authorship required determination.
Whether the applicant's alternative claim to authorship through his creation and use of the AI system could be considered on appeal.
III. Analysis of the applicable law
1. Copyright Act of 1976 — Sections 102(a) and 201(a)
Section 102(a) provides for copyright protection in original works of authorship, subject to the statute's requirements. Section 201(a) provides that copyright initially vests in the author or authors of the work.
The Court interpreted these provisions in the context of the statutory scheme as a whole. It examined provisions concerning the duration of copyright, inheritance, transfer of copyright, the legal attributes of authorship, and the treatment of machines as instruments used in creative processes.
The Court concluded that the statutory scheme required the author to be a human being. Since the application identified a machine as the sole author, the application failed at the threshold.
2. Work-made-for-hire doctrine — Section 201(b)
Section 201(b) permits an employer or other qualifying person for whom a work is prepared to be considered its author for purposes of the statute in specified circumstances.
The Court rejected Dr. Thaler's reliance on this doctrine. The work-made-for-hire provision does not independently create copyright in material that is not eligible for copyright protection in the first place. The threshold requirement of human authorship continued to apply.
The decision therefore does not establish that payment for an AI subscription, ownership of the system, or the provision of instructions automatically transfers copyright in an otherwise unprotected output.
3. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony (1884)
The Court's discussion of the historical treatment of photography supported its analysis of the relationship between technology and authorship. Photography may employ a mechanical instrument, but copyright protection can attach where the work embodies the photographer's creative contribution.
The analogy does not mean that every result produced by a machine is copyrightable. It supports the distinction between a technological instrument assisting a human creator and a machine claimed to have generated a work autonomously.
4. AI-assisted works distinguished from autonomous generation
The Court expressly recognised that the human-authorship requirement does not prohibit copyright protection for every work made with AI assistance. Whether an AI-assisted work qualifies depends upon the circumstances, including how the system operates and how it was used in producing the final work.
The Court did not resolve the disputed boundary between human creative contribution and AI-generated expression in this appeal, because Dr. Thaler had identified the machine as the sole author and claimed autonomous generation.
5. Constitutional issue
The Court declined to determine whether the United States Constitution independently requires human authorship. It considered the Copyright Act itself sufficient to dispose of the appeal.
Accordingly, the constitutional issue was left open, rather than decided against Dr. Thaler on its merits.
IV. Ratio decidendi
The ratio decidendi may be stated as follows:
Under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, a work claimed to have been generated autonomously by an artificial intelligence system, with the system expressly identified as its sole author and without human creative contribution, is not eligible for copyright registration because the statutory scheme requires authorship by a human being. The work-made-for-hire doctrine cannot confer copyright where the threshold requirement for copyright protection has not been satisfied.
The ratio must be confined to the issues actually decided.
The Court did not hold that all works created with AI assistance are ineligible for copyright. Nor did it determine the merits of the applicant's alternative contention that his own creation and use of the system made him the author, because that argument had been waived and was not properly preserved.
V. Conclusion
The judgment affirms the refusal to register A Recent Entrance to Paradise because the application attributed sole authorship to an AI system said to have generated the image autonomously.
Its significance lies in the distinction between autonomous machine generation and human-authored work produced with technological assistance. The former was rejected on the facts and statutory interpretation before the Court; the latter was not categorically excluded.
For Indian copyright jurisprudence, the judgment is persuasive comparative material, not a binding interpretation of Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act, 1957. India's express provision identifying the author of a computer-generated work as “the person who causes the work to be created” raises a distinct question of statutory interpretation. Thaler does not answer that question.
The Indian inquiry must therefore independently determine how statutory causation, human creative contribution, originality and first ownership interact in the case of generative AI.
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