Thaler v. Perlmutter, Refusal of First Request for Reconsideration

by the United States Copyright Office

March 30,2020

Ryan Abbott
Frank Whittle Building 02 AB 05
Guildford, GU27XH
United Kingdom

 

Correspondence ID:	1-3ZPC6C3
Original Corresp. ID:	1-3NPRZ2Y

Re: A Recent Entrance to Paradise

Dear Mr. Abbott:

This correspondence responds to your September 8, 2019 letter requesting reconsideration of the U.S. Copyright Office’s (the “Office”) refusal to register a copyright claim in the above-titled work. You made this request on behalf of the copyright claimant, Stephen Thaler.

We reviewed A Recent Entrance to Paradise (the “Work”) in light of the points raised in your letter. We affirm our decision to refuse registration for the Work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to be eligible for copyright protection.

Discussion

The U.S. Copyright Office will register an original work of authorship only if the work was created by a human being. This includes any human being that prepares a work on behalf of an organizational author as a work made for hire.

As noted in our original refusal letter, the copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the mind.” Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879). Because copyright law is limited to “original intellectual conceptions of the author,” the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884). See also 17 U.S.C. §102(a) & U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices § 306 (3d ed. 2017).

The Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without sufficient creative input or intervention from a human author. Compendium (Third) § 313.2. As you state in your letter, the Work here was “autonomously generated by an AI.” Letter at 1. You have provided no evidence on sufficient creative input or intervention by a human author in the Work. We conclude, therefore, that the Work lacks the human authorship necessary to sustain a claim in copyright. The various legal and policy arguments put forth in your request for reconsideration are insufficient to convince the Office to abandon its longstanding interpretation of the Copyright Act, Supreme Court, and lower court judicial precedent that a work meets the legal and formal requirements of copyright protection only if it is created by a human author.

Conclusion

Because it was not created by a human author, we again refuse copyright registration for A Recent Entrance to Paradise.

Sincerely,

 

Frank Muller
Attorney-Advisor for Registration Policy & Practice
Office of Registration Policy & Practice | U.S. Copyright Office
101 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC 20559-6222