Case 1:22-cv-01564-BAH Document 17 Filed 02/07/23 Page 23 of 34
Chicago Park Dist., 635 F.3d 290, 304 (7th Cir. 2011) (observing that “authorship is an entirely human endeavor”) (internal citations omitted).[1]
Plaintiff’s attempt to re-write the holdings of these cases is unpersuasive. See Dkt. 16 at 19. Urantia Found. is not a case limited to works “authored in part by a spirit.” Rather, the “threshold issue” of that case was whether a work “claimed to embody the words of celestial beings rather than human beings, is copyrightable at all.” Urantia Found., 114 F.3d at 958 (emphasis added). Addressing the argument that copyright requires “the requisite ingredient of human creativity,” the court held that “in this case some element of human creativity must have occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable.” Id. While Plaintiff suggests that the “worldly” nature of the Creativity Machine is sufficient for copyright protection, Dkt. 16 at 19, the record in this case lacks evidence that Work was the result of “human” creativity, Dkt. 13-8 at US_0000033.
Similarly, Naruto is not merely an “animal art” case. Dkt. 16 at 19. In that case, the Ninth Circuit considered a complaint alleging that a monkey was “the author and owner of” photographs and had a right to sue under the Copyright Act. Naruto, 888 F.3d at 426. As Plaintiff concedes, the court answered in the negative because “animals other than humans” cannot sue under the Act. Id. at 426. The court also noted that “if Congress and the President intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals” to sue, the statute would need to state so clearly. Id. at 425 (quoting Cetacean Cmty. v. Bush, 386 F.3d 1169, 1179 (9th Cir.
- ↑ These judicial decisions are reflected in the Office’s guidance in its Compendium, which requires that copyrighted works be created by a human and provides examples of unregistrable works such as “a photograph taken by a monkey” and “an application for a song naming the Holy Spirit as the author.” Compendium (Third) § 313.2. Similarly, the Compendium incorporates the holdings in cases such as Trade-Mark Cases and Sarony, which require human authorship as a condition for copyright protection. See, e.g., id. §§ 306, 313.2.
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