Beryl Howell

“ The increased attenuation of human creativity from the actual generation of the final work will prompt challenging questions regarding how much human input is necessary to qualify the user of an AI system as an “author” of a generated work, the scope of the protection obtained over the resultant image, how to assess the originality of AI-generated works where the systems may have been trained on unknown pre-existing works, how copyright might best be used to incentivize creative works involving AI, and more. ”

“ Human involvement in, and ultimate creative control over, the work at issue was key to the conclusion that the new type of work fell within the bounds of copyright.
Copyright has never stretched so far, however, as to protect works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand, as plaintiff urges here. Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright. ”

“ By denying registration, the Register concluded that no valid copyright had ever existed in a work generated absent human involvement, leaving nothing at all to register and thus no question as to whom that registration belonged.
The only question properly presented, then, is whether the Register acted arbitrarily or capriciously or otherwise in violation of the APA in reaching that conclusion. The Register did not err in denying the copyright registration application presented by plaintiff. United States copyright law protects only works of human creation. ”

“ The human authorship requirement has also been consistently recognized by the Supreme Court when called upon to interpret the copyright law. As already noted, in Sarony, the Court’s recognition of the copyrightability of a photograph rested on the fact that the human creator, not the camera, conceived of and designed the image and then used the camera to capture the image. ”

“ For the reasons explained below, defendants are correct that human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim, and therefore plaintiff’s pending motion for summary judgment is denied and defendants’ pending cross-motion for summary judgment is granted.
I. BACKGROUND
Plaintiff develops and owns computer programs he describes as having “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) capable of generating original pieces of visual art, akin to the output of a human artist. ”

“ At the founding, both copyright and patent were conceived of as forms of property that the government was established to protect, and it was understood that recognizing exclusive rights in that property would further the public good by incentivizing individuals to create and invent. ”

“ The use of personal pronouns in the first definition clearly contemplates only human beings as eligible “employees,” while the second necessitates a meeting of the minds and exchange of signatures in a valid contract not possible with a non-human entity. ”

“ The Copyright Office denied the application on the basis that the work “lack [ed] the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim,” noting that copyright law only extends to works created by human beings. ”

“ Plaintiff’s effort to update and modify the facts for judicial review on an APA claim is too late. On the record designed by plaintiff from the outset of his application for copyright registration, this case presents only the question of whether a work generated autonomously by a computer system is eligible for copyright. In the absence of any human involvement in the creation of the work, the clear and straightforward answer is the one given by the Register: No. ”