A district court denied copyright to a machine-made image
Thaler v. Perlmutter held human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright; the ruling was later appealed.
- Historical event
- August 18, 2023
- First source published
- August 18, 2023
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
The record
On 18 August 2023, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided Thaler v. Perlmutter, a case brought by computer scientist Stephen Thaler after the Copyright Office refused to register a visual work he said his system, the "Creativity Machine," had generated autonomously. Thaler's application named the machine as author and sought the copyright for himself as the machine's owner. The court's memorandum opinion records that both sides moved for summary judgment on a single question: whether a work generated entirely by an artificial system, without human involvement, is eligible for copyright at all.
What the documents show
The opinion holds that the Register did not act arbitrarily in refusing registration, because "human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright." The court traced that requirement through the Copyright Act's text and through Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, the 1884 photography case Thaler's own filings invoked, distinguishing a camera operator's creative choices from an AI system Thaler had represented, throughout the administrative record, as acting without his creative input. The court noted that Thaler's litigation briefs tried to emphasize his role in developing and prompting the system, but held that judicial review of the agency's decision had to rest on the facts Thaler gave the Register, which described the work as autonomously generated. The case did not end there: a search of the appellate docket shows Thaler appealed, and the D.C. Circuit's opinion, argued in September 2024 and issued 18 March 2025, confirms the appeal proceeded and that the district court's judgment was the ruling under review.
Why it stays interesting
The ruling turns on a fact Thaler chose to stipulate, not a general finding about every AI-assisted book or image: he represented to the Register, consistently, that no human creative input shaped the output. A publisher or author reading this case for guidance on ordinary AI-assisted writing should notice that distinction, editorially, before extending its holding to tools used with substantial human direction, selection or revision, which the opinion itself does not address.
What to read next
The Copyright Office's own Part 2 report on copyrightability, issued five months later, addresses the broader question of how much human contribution suffices, the question this narrower case did not need to reach. Reading the two together shows how one refused registration became the occasion for a wider policy study.
- What facts did the applicant represent to the Copyright Office, and does the ruling depend on those specific representations?
- How would the analysis differ for a work where a human author selected, arranged or substantially revised AI-generated material?
- What did the appellate court add to or leave undisturbed from the district court's reasoning?
A refusal built on one applicant's own account of a machine acting alone says less about AI-assisted authorship generally than headlines about it often suggest, and the opinion's own language marks that limit.
Sources & reading trail
The district court's holding that human authorship is required and its reasoning on the summary judgment record.
Source published: 18 August 2023 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Confirms the case was appealed, argued in September 2024, and decided by the D.C. Circuit in March 2025.
Source published: 18 March 2025 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Reports, filings, records and studies establish the entry; the reading of why it stays interesting is Chapter Ledger editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
Continue reading
- A copyright report left AI authorship a case-by-case question
- A comic's text kept copyright while its AI images lost it
- Browse the complete the ledger archive
Sources & reading trail
- Thaler v. Perlmutter, Memorandum Opinion (D.D.C.)
Source published: August 18, 2023 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - Stephen Thaler v. Shira Perlmutter, Opinion (D.C. Cir. No. 23-5233)
Source published: March 18, 2025 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.