Dopo il rigetto del Tribunale di Washington del 2023 (v. mio post), dr Thaler subisce altra sconfitta nella sua indefessa battaglia per far ricoscenere la privativa d’autore alla sua intelligenza artificiale per l’opera “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”. V.la qui sotto:
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Si tratta di US C. of appeals, Dist. of Ciolumbia Circuit, n° 23-5233, 18.03.2025..
la Corte ricorda che secondo il diritto usa la ratio è la diffusione delle opere nel pubblico, più che la ricompensa per l’autore e che la neecessità di intervento umano non impedisce la protezione.
<<Copyright law incentivizes the creation of original works
so they can be used and enjoyed by the public. Since the
founding, Congress has given authors short term monopolies
over their original work. See Act of May 31, 1790, ch. 15, 1st
Cong., 1 Stat. 124. This protection is not extended as “a special
reward” to the author, but rather “to encourage the production
of works that others might reproduce more cheaply.” Google
LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc., 593 U.S. 1, 16 (2021). By ensuring
that easily reproducible work is protected, individuals are
incentivized to undertake the effort of creating original works
that otherwise would be easily plagiarized. (…)
Dr. Thaler also argues that the human-authorship
requirement wrongly prevents copyright law from protecting
works made with artificial intelligence. Thaler Opening Br. 38.
But the Supreme Court has long held that copyright law is
intended to benefit the public, not authors. Copyright law
“makes reward to the owner a secondary consideration. * * *
‘[T]he primary object in conferring the monopoly lie[s] in the
general benefits derived by the public from the labors of
authors.’” United States v. Loew’s, Inc., 371 U.S. 38, 46-47
(1962) (quoting Fox Film Co. v. Doyal, 286 U.S. 123, 127
(1932)). (…)
Contrary to Dr. Thaler’s assumption, adhering to the
human-authorship requirement does not impede the protection
of works made with artificial intelligence. Thaler Opening Br.
38-39.
First, the human authorship requirement does not prohibit
copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of
artificial intelligence. The rule requires only that the author of
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that work be a human being—the person who created,
operated, or used artificial intelligence—and not the machine
itself. The Copyright Office, in fact, has allowed the
registration of works made by human authors who use artificial
intelligence. See Copyright Registration Guidance: Works
Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence, 88
Fed. Reg. 16,190, 16,192 (March 16, 2023) (Whether a work
made with artificial intelligence is registerable depends “on the
circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how
it was used to create the final work.”).
To be sure, the Copyright Office has rejected some
copyright applications based on the human-authorship
requirement even when a human being is listed as the author.
See Copyright Office, Re: Zarya of the Dawn (Registration #
VAu001480196) (Feb. 21, 2023), https://perma.cc/AD86-
WGPM (denying copyright registration for a comic book’s
images made with generative artificial intelligence). Some
have disagreed with these decisions. See Motion Picture
Association, Comment Letter on Artificial Intelligence and
Copyright at 5 (Oct. 30, 2023), https://perma.cc/9W9X-3EZE
(This “very broad definition of ‘generative AI’ has the potential
to sweep in technologies that are not new and that members use
to assist creators in making motion pictures.”); 2 W. P ATRY,
C OPYRIGHT § 3:60.52 (2024); Legal Professors Amicus Br. 36-
37 (“The U.S. Copyright Office guidelines are somewhat
paradoxical: human contributions must be demonstrated within
the creative works generated by AI.”).
Those line-drawing disagreements over how much
artificial intelligence contributed to a particular human author’s
work are neither here nor there in this case. That is because Dr.
Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author of the
work before us, and it is undeniably a machine, not a human
being. Dr. Thaler, in other words, argues only for the
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copyrightability of a work authored exclusively by artificial
intelligence. Contrast Rearden LLC v. Walt Disney Co., 293
F. Supp. 3d 963 (N.D. Cal. 2018) (holding that companies may
copyright work made with motion capture software).
Second, Dr. Thaler has not explained how a ban on
machines being authors would result in less original work
because machines, including the Creativity Machine, do not
respond to economic incentives.
Dr. Thaler worries that the human-authorship requirement
will disincentivize creativity by the creators and operators of
artificial intelligence. Thaler Opening Br. 36. That argument
overlooks that the requirement still incentivizes humans like
Dr. Thaler to create and to pursue exclusive rights to works that
they make with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
Of course, the Creativity Machine does not represent the
limits of human technical ingenuity when it comes to artificial
intelligence. Humans at some point might produce creative
non-humans capable of responding to economic incentives.
Science fiction is replete with examples of creative machines
that far exceed the capacities of current generative artificial
intelligence. For example, Star Trek’s Data might be worse
than ChatGPT at writing poetry, but Data’s intelligence is
comparable to that of a human being. See Star Trek: The Next
Generation: Schism (Paramount television broadcast Oct. 19,
1992) (“Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature, an
endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature”). There will
be time enough for Congress and the Copyright Office to tackle
those issues when they arise.
Third, Congress’s choice not to amend the law since 1976
to allow artificial-intelligence authorship “might well be taken
to be an acquiescence in the judicial construction given to the
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copyright laws.” White-Smith Music Pub. Co. v. Apollo Co.,
209 U.S. 1, 14 (1908). The human-authorship requirement is
not new and has been the subject of multiple judicial decisions.
The Seventh Circuit has squarely held that authors “of
copyrightable works must be human.” Kelley v. Chicago Park
Dist., 635 F.3d 290, 304 (7th Cir. 2011). And the Ninth Circuit
has strongly implied the same when deciding that an author
must be a “worldly entity,” Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra,
114 F.3d 955, 958 (9th Cir. 1997), and cannot be an animal,
Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418, 426 (9th Cir. 2018).
Finally, even if the human authorship requirement were at
some point to stymy the creation of original work, that would
be a policy argument for Congress to address. U.S. C ONST. Art.
I, § 8, cl. 8. “Congress has the constitutional authority and the
institutional ability to accommodate fully the varied
permutations of competing interests that are inevitably
implicated by such new technology.” Sony, 464 U.S. at 431>>