U.S. Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter AI Authorship Case, March 2026

The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 25-449, on March 2, 2026. The denial leaves intact the D.C. Circuit's ruling in Thaler v. Vidal (No. 23-5233), which held that copyright registration requires human authorship and that a work generated entirely by an AI system without human creative contribution does not qualify for copyright protection under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a).

The controlling statutory authority is 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), which extends copyright protection to "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." The Copyright Office and the D.C. Circuit both construed "authorship" as requiring a human author. The D.C. Circuit's opinion in Thaler v. Vidal affirmed the Copyright Office's refusal to register "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a two-dimensional artwork that petitioner Stephen Thaler asserted was autonomously created by his "Creativity Machine" AI without any human creative input.

The denial of certiorari means that, in all U.S. jurisdictions, purely AI-generated works remain ineligible for copyright registration absent a sufficient showing of human creative expression in the selection, arrangement, or modification of the AI output. Entities developing or commercializing AI-generated content — including generative AI platforms, training dataset providers, and media companies — cannot rely on copyright to protect works produced by AI without human authorship. Licensing strategies, terms of service, and product documentation should reflect this limitation.

The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case does not constitute a ruling on the merits and does not resolve all open questions, including the degree of human input sufficient to satisfy the authorship requirement for partially AI-assisted works. The Copyright Office has issued guidance stating it will assess copyright claims in AI-generated material on a case-by-case basis, requiring disclosure of AI assistance and evaluating the extent of human creative control.

Source: Supreme Court of the United States, Docket No. 25-449, Thaler v. Perlmutter (cert. denied Mar. 2, 2026). Available at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25-449.html. Confirmed: March 6, 2026.

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