Case 1:22-cv-01564-BAH Document 24 Filed 08/18/23 Page 14 of 15
at 64 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, plaintiff informed the Register that the work was “[c]reated autonomously by machine,” and that his claim to the copyright was only based on the fact of his “[o]wnership of the machine.” Application at 2. The Register therefore made her decision based on the fact the application presented that plaintiff played no role in using the AI to generate the work, which plaintiff never attempted to correct. See First Request for Reconsideration at 2 (“It is correct that the present submission lacks traditional human authorship—it was autonomously generated by an AI.”); Second Request for Reconsideration at 2 (same). 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.
Given that the work at issue did not give rise to a valid copyright upon its creation, plaintiff’s myriad theories for how ownership of such a copyright could have passed to him need not be further addressed. Common law doctrines of property transfer cannot be implicated where no property right exists to transfer in the first instance. The work-for-hire provisions of the Copyright Act, too, presuppose that an interest exists to be claimed. See 17 U.S.C § 201(b) (“In the case of a work made for hire, the employer … owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright.”).[1] Here, the image autonomously generated by plaintiff’s computer system was
- ↑ In any event, plaintiff’s attempts to cast the work as a work-for-hire must fail as both definitions of a “work made for hire” available under the Copyright Act require that the individual who prepares the work is a human being. The first definition provides that “a ‘work made for hire’ is … a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment,” while the second qualifies certain eligible works “if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.” 17 U.S.C. § 101 (emphasis added). 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.
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