Overview
- On March 2, 2026, the Court declined to hear Stephen Thaler’s appeal in Thaler v. Perlmutter, ending his effort to name an AI system as an author of the image A Recent Entrance to Paradise.
- The D.C. Circuit previously affirmed that the Creativity Machine cannot be an author because the Copyright Act requires initial authorship by a human being, as written by Judge Patricia A. Millett.
- District Judge Beryl A. Howell earlier upheld the Copyright Office’s refusal, calling human authorship a bedrock requirement of copyright.
- The Copyright Office first rejected Thaler’s 2018 application in 2019 for lacking human authorship, citing long-standing doctrine reflected in its Compendium and cases like Burrow-Giles v. Sarony.
- The Solicitor General supported the narrow framing that the ruling concerns machine authorship only, noting that works made with AI can still be protected when a human author’s creative contribution exists.