Case 1:22-cv-01564-BAH Document 17 Filed 02/07/23 Page 14 of 34
Dkt. 13-2 at US_0000002). The decision also pointed to previous Supreme Court opinions stating 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.” Dkt 13-4 at US_0000005 (quoting Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. at 94; Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58 (1884)).
Plaintiff appealed the initial refusal of registration on September 23, 2019[1]. See Dkt. 13-5. Plaintiff’s request for reconsideration opened by acknowledging that “[i]t is correct that the present submission lacks traditional human authorship—it was autonomously generated by an AI.” Id. at US_0000009.[2] Plaintiff’s request for reconsideration was largely based on policy arguments in support of registration, including the argument that the Office “should register copyrights for [machine-generated works] because doing so would further the underlying goals of copyright law, including the constitutional rationale for copyright protection, and because there is no binding authority that prohibits” registration. Id. at US_0000010; see also id. at US_0000013 (under heading “Policy Objections,” arguing that the human authorship requirement “strongly discourages the use and development of creative AI”). Plaintiff also argued without analysis that because “non-human, artificial persons such as companies can already be authors” under the work made for hire doctrine, that provided “precedent” for permitting him to register the Work. Id. at US_0000012. Finally, Plaintiff criticized the Office’s
- ↑ The top of Plaintiff’s first request for reconsideration is dated September 8, 2019, but the attorney’s signature block has a date of September 23, 2019. Compare Dkt. 13-5 at US_0000009 with Dkt. 13-5 at US_0000016.
- ↑ At no point in Plaintiff’s copyright application or his two requests for reconsideration did he suggest that he had any involvement in or direction of the specific expressive content of the Work. See generally Dkt. 13-5; Dkt. 13-7. For that reason, there is no evidence in the Administrative Record that, as Plaintiff now argues, he “provided instructions and directed his AI to create the Work.” Dkt. 16 at 25.
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