Thaler Appeals D.C. Court Decision Denying Copyright for AI-Generated Art

David Grossman, co-chair of Loeb & Loeb’s Litigation department, and associate Keane Barger, were referenced in The Fashion Law for their case summary of Thaler v. Perlmutter, which ruled that artificial intelligence-generated art does not fall under copyright laws. 

The article quotes the following from David and Keane’s case summary: 

“First, the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution was adopted to incentivize the creation of unique and original works of authorship. Nonhuman actors, unlike human authors, require no financial incentive to create. ’[C]opyright was therefore not designed to reach’ artificial intelligence systems.

Second, the Copyright Act of 1909 provided that only a “person” could “secure copyright” for a work. The court found that the legislative history of the Copyright Act of 1976 is devoid of any indication that Congress sought to extend the concept of authorship to nonhuman actors. To the contrary, the congressional reports stated that Congress sought to incorporate the “original work of authorship” standard “without change.”

Third, case law has “consistently recognized” the human authorship requirement. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1884 opinion in Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, the Court, in upholding the constitutionality of an amendment to the Copyright Act covering photographs, found it significant that the human creator, not the camera, “conceived of and designed the image and then used the camera to capture the image.”


To read the full article, please visit The Fashion Law’s website.