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This area is so relatively new that SCOTUS is going to let it percolate through the lower courts (using the various circuits as laboratories to try out several approaches) and then address the issue once it is mature and a good circuit split has developed.
Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing to lose sleep over at this point. "Move along."
If SCOTUS is saying that AI works, even those co-authored by humans, are not eligible for copyright/patenting;
Doesn't that mean any code-base that uses AI generated code does not have an implicit copyright holder? And thus even the human constructor does not have the right to apply any license [closed/open] onto it whatsoever?
> If SCOTUS is saying that AI works, even those co-authored by humans, are not eligible for copyright/patenting;
They aren't.
The copyright office isn't either.
Everybody is very explictly saying that if you use say Sora to generate an image and you apply for a copyright with "Sora" as the author it'll be denied.
Same as if you apply for a copyright with "My Dog" as the author.
Authors must be humans and if you do not fill the author field out with a human it's denied. This has nothing to do with the tool used to create the art work.
While I would like to believe you, doesn't this legal document linked by the article show that, in at least one of the cases, the author WAS trying to apply with himself, "Mr. Allen", as the author? And not the AI?
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byprrqkqxpe/...
Allen's case has not reached the Supreme Court. The Copyright Office said he could have copyright of what he authored. But he refused to disclaim what Midjourney generated.
> Doesn't that mean any code-base that uses AI generated code does not have an implicit copyright holder? And thus even the human constructor does not have the right to apply any license [closed/open] onto it whatsoever?
besides copyright, source code also can be protected as a trade secret.
For a company with any decent number of people with access to the code base, extremely difficult to maintain that type of protection.
I mean trade secret as a legal protection: code is declared as trade secret. Then if employee leaks it, and other company uses it, it can be sued.
It is not that simple. To have that protection, it needs to be treated (and protected) like an actual secret.
It’s why the nominal ‘top secret’ coke formula is stored in a giant vault.
If everyone at the company has access (and it’s a big company), good luck having that protection.
https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/wipo-guide-to-trade-se... is likely a good source for the "what constitutes trade secret"
To enjoy trade secret protection, the above mentioned three criteria (i.e., secrecy, commercial value because of the secrecy, and reasonable steps taken by trade secret holders to maintain secrecy) must be complied with (see section 2.1 for the criteria to be met).
Trade secrets can be protected for an unlimited period of time, unless they cease to meet the criteria for trade secret protection.
Trade secret holders can seek protection only where unauthorized disclosure, acquisition or use of their trade secrets is made in a manner contrary to honest commercial practice. In other words, they do not enjoy the type of “exclusive rights” that are generally available for other categories of IP. This will be discussed in the next section.
There's also a section on trade secrets and digital objects... which includes code ... and that gets into other challenges.
https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/wipo-guide-to-trade-se...
Copyright is another form of intellectual property protection available to code and algorithms. However, it should be noted that certain jurisdictions do not permit an owner to assert both trade secret and copyright, especially if the copyrighted software discloses a majority of the source code or the “proprietary” portions. In the Capricorn case, the court held that the source code owner was barred from asserting trade secret protection because the code was also registered as a copyright, and thus available to the public. Therefore, the source code owner should carefully consider the pros and cons of each type of protection.
https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/wipo-guide-to-trade-se...
> One of the things there though is that trade secrets don't have exclusive rights. If you write code and then distribute the application, trade secrets don't protect it anymore.
which source says this?
claude says one needs to take "reasonable steps", which includes asking employee to sign NDA, setting access control, and putting TRADE SECRET disclosure in source files: https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/12/02/fourth-circuit-clarifies-r...
That hinges on whether you can convince a judge that your LLM's slop meets the requirement of being inaccessible to other professionals of the same field, and that committing it to your repo meets the bar for keeping it secret.
I wouldn't hold my breath.
Given how the models were trained for coding, every single code base that uses any code generated by an LLM should be required to be open sourced, or at least source available.
I'm not saying there is currently a legal president to enforce this, I'm saying ethically it make sense.
I pretty much agree with you in principle, but I'm also positive this will never happen.
Definitely not.
Apparently copyright and licences only matter until a mega corporation stands to loose billions thanks to their blatant theft. Then nobody cares. But you're suppose to feel bad for pirating the latest season of Stranger Things.
Its truly sad but true.
Coming back to this - why do we collectively put up with this bullshit? Corruption is everywhere and we are collectively just withdrawn in defeat that we've lost and this is the inevitable state of things.. can't we do better than this?
This would only apply if the codebase were 100% vibe coded. If there is human input - as there is in code, with the role of the software engineer, then it falls into another category for the sake of copyright arguments. And the way it works is copyright is granted automatically and only revoked/denied through litigation.
There's going to be a spectrum here, but for some of these new pilot projects like vinext where the claim is primary AI authorship I would expect the resulting works not to be copyrighted.
What does that mean? I don't know. They are claiming copyright over vinext and licensing it under MIT, a copyright-based license. So the license and the copyright both get swept away in the flood there and what's left is a formerly-copyrighted software duplicated as a work [in the public domain?] [that nobody can legally use?] [that the author can legally use but not legally license?]
Choose your own adventure, now with copyright law!
That's the position I came to based on these rulings, or lack thereof.
I think of all the reasons open source shouldn't accept AI created code is that it can't be protected, and that has the potential to threaten the whole project.
OpenClaw, for instance has an MIT license [0], but, per the creators own words, they didn't even review the code. OpenClaw isn't MIT licensed, the MIT license relies on copyright, and because there was not even human review of the majority of the code, no substantial human input, that code base can't be copyrighted.
No need to steal AI code, it doesn't belong to anyone.
[0] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw?tab=MIT-1-ov-file#readm...
Hopefully.
Other coverage:
* The Supreme Court doesn't care if you want to copyright your AI-generated art https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-supreme-court-doesnt-care-if...
* U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/02/us-supreme-court-declines-to...
* AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines to review the rule https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-...
There is a huge difference between SCOTUS "declines to hear" versus SCOTUS "rules that ..."
Certainly there is no difference to these particular parties. But refusing to hear the case in such an important field as AI is simply an indication SCOTUS is feels it is too early for it to be making rules involving a very fast moving and transformative field as AI.
What it generally means is that the lower court ruling stands and serves as precedent nationwide. Binding precedent in the circuit that handed down the ruling. But another circuit may make a different ruling sometime, and then the Supremes practically have to hear the case to resolve the conflict.
True, but SCOTUS is not required to grant Cert even if a circuit split develops. They may feel the issue needs more time to "mature".
e.g. They may want more cases heard in the lower courts to provide them with a better 'flavor' regarding the nature of legal arguments being made; or more time for a rapidly changing business/social development to evolve and greater clarity emerges.
Or that the law is already settled… the ape selfie determined already authors must be human
Copyright trolls were probably licking their chops at the thought of copyrighting the output of common AI prompts.