Source: Mondaq

Mondaq reports that a petition for a writ of certiorari has been filed with the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case of Thaler v. Perlmutter, escalating the debate over the copyrightability of works created solely by artificial intelligence. The petition challenges the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which affirmed the U.S. Copyright Office's refusal to register a visual work titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," generated by Stephen Thaler's "Creativity Machine." The central legal question presented to the Court is whether the Copyright Act's requirement for "authorship" strictly mandates a human creator, a standard that the lower courts have consistently upheld based on statutory text and historical precedent.

The petitioner argues that the "human authorship" requirement is an antiquated interpretation that stifles innovation and fails to account for the capabilities of modern generative AI systems. By denying copyright protection to AI-generated works, Thaler contends that the current legal framework disincentivizes the development and use of creative AI tools. This case represents a critical test for the intellectual property regime in the United States, as a Supreme Court ruling would definitively establish whether the fruits of autonomous AI creativity can enjoy the same proprietary protections as human works or if they must remain in the public domain.