Case: Stephen Thaler v. Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the United States Copyright Office, et al., No. 25-449
Lower Court: District of Columbia
Docketed: 2025-10-14
Status: Denied
Question Presented: 1. Whether works outputted by an AI system without a direct, traditional authorial contribution by a natural person can be copyrighted.
On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, declining to take up the question of whether purely AI-generated works—those produced without meaningful human authorial input—qualify for copyright protection. The denial came after two conferences and three amicus submissions, suggesting the Court considered the petition with some care before passing.
Petitioner Stephen Thaler, represented by Ryan Benjamin Abbott, argued that the human-authorship requirement lacks statutory grounding and forecloses protection for an emerging category of creative output. The government, represented by D. John Sauer, opposed certiorari, defending the Copyright Office’s longstanding interpretation.
The denial leaves the lower court’s ruling intact without Supreme Court endorsement. The full docket record shows the Court distributed the petition twice before denying, which may reflect internal deliberation rather than a quick pass. The legal question itself remains formally open at the Supreme Court level.
The practical consequence is that AI-generated works without human creative contribution remain unprotectable under current doctrine. As AI tools become more capable and more commercially significant, pressure on this question will grow. Litigants in other circuits may produce a split that eventually compels the Court to act. For now, the human-authorship requirement stands as settled policy, even if its statutory basis remains contested in academic and legal circles.