Case 1:22-cv-01564-BAH Document 21 Filed 04/05/23 Page 6 of 15
A. Copyright Protection Requires Human Authorship
First, as discussed in Defendants’ Cross-Motion, the Supreme Court has consistently referred to a human person when discussing the term “author” as used in the Copyright Clause of the Constitution and in copyright statutes. See Dkt. 17 at 10, 16 (citing Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884); Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 214 (1954); Goldstein v. California, 412 U.S. 546, 561 (1973)); see also Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239, 250 (1903) (describing a copyrightable work as “the personal reaction of an individual upon nature,” and describing copyright as protecting the unique, singular “personality” of an individual’s work). This follows from the Supreme Court’s holdings that copyright protects only “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind” and is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author.” See Dkt. 17 at 14 (quoting In re Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879); Sarony, 111 U.S. at 58).
Second, Plaintiff’s repeated assertions that the current Act allows for “non-human authorship” are incorrect and unsupported in the statutory text. Defendants addressed this argument in their Cross-Motion, see Dkt. 17 at 13–14 (discussing text, structure, and history of statutory provisions regarding authorship); see, e.g., 17 U.S.C. § 302(a) (term of copyright protection endures for “a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death”); § 302(b) (for joint works, term consists of “life of the last surviving author” plus 70 years), and Plaintiff’s Opposition and Reply does not and cannot show otherwise. The case-law relied upon by Plaintiff fails to support Plaintiff’s contention that person “is used in its broadest sense to include non-human entities.” Dkt. 18 at 2–3. In both Warren v. Fox Fam. Worldwide, Inc. and Marvel Characters, Inc. v. Kirby, the case-law cited by Plaintiff, see Dkt. 18 at 3, the courts were addressing written agreements between employers and employees and not the
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