United States of America: Supreme Court declines review of AI-generated work copyright case (Thaler v Perlmutter)
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Supreme Court declines review of AI-generated work copyright case (Thaler v Perlmutter)
On 2 March 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for a writ of certiorari in Stephen Thaler v Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the United States Copyright Office. The case concerned the copyrightability of “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”, a visual work generated by an artificial intelligence system known as the Creativity Machine. The petitioner challenged earlier decisions of the District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which held that the Copyright Act requires human authorship. The petition for certiorari was filed on 9 October 2025. Following a briefing by the parties, the Supreme Court declined to review the case. As a result, the lower court rulings remain in place, maintaining the position that copyright protection under US law applies to works created by human authors.
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