Case 1:22-cv-01564-BAH Document 17 Filed 02/07/23 Page 22 of 34
The Supreme Court’s later cases have similarly articulated a nexus between human expression and copyright. In Mazer v. Stein, the Court cited Sarony for the proposition that a work “must be original, that is, the author’s tangible expression of his ideas.” 347 U.S. 201, 214 (1954). And in Goldstein v. California, the Court again cited Sarony for the proposition that “[w]hile an ‘author’ may be viewed as an individual who writes an original composition, the term in its constitutional sense, has been construed to mean an ‘originator,’ ‘he to whom anything owes its origin.’” 412 U.S. 546, 561 (1973).
| 3. | Federal Appellate Courts Have Reached the Same Conclusion |
Plaintiff is not the first to attempt to extend copyright protection to non-humans. In earlier cases, including Urantia Found. v. Kristen Maaherra, Naruto v. Slater, and Kelley v. Chicago Park Dist., appellate courts have rebuffed would-be non-human authors.[1] And the Board’s decision explained its reliance on these cases. See Dkt. 13-8 at US_0000034–35 (explaining that “lower courts have repeatedly rejected attempts to extend copyright protection to non-human creations” and citing relevant cases); Urantia Found. v. Kristen Maaherra, 114 F.3d 955, 957–59 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that “some element of human creativity must have occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable” because “it is not creations of divine beings that the copyright laws were intended to protect”); Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418, 426 (9th Cir. 2018) (reasoning that a monkey cannot register a copyright in photos it captures with a camera because the Act refers to an author’s “children,” “widow,” “grandchildren,” and “widower,”—terms that “all imply humanity and necessarily exclude animals”) (decided on other grounds); Kelley v.
- ↑ Courts examining this question under United States patent law have reached a similar conclusion. The Federal Circuit recently rejected an attempt by Plaintiff to patent an invention by a machine. See Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F.4th 1207, 1210 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (“there is no ambiguity: the Patent Act requires that inventors must be natural persons; that is, human beings”).
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