{"id":245516,"date":"2026-05-13T23:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T03:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-authorship-still-controls-and-documenting-the-creation-process-is-critical-polsinelli\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T00:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:05:06","slug":"who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-authorship-still-controls-and-documenting-the-creation-process-is-critical-polsinelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-authorship-still-controls-and-documenting-the-creation-process-is-critical-polsinelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Human Authorship Still Controls, and Documenting the Creation Process Is Critical | Polsinelli"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-1509048\/\">Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Human Authorship Still Controls, and Documenting the Creation Process Is Critical | Polsinelli<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-1509048\/\">https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-1509048\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-13 23:45:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.jdsupra.com\">www.jdsupra.com<\/a><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top:24px; margin-bottom:5px\"><span style=\"font-weight:700; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">Key Takeaways<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\" style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">Copyright law\u2019s existing framework still governs AI-generated outputs: originality, human authorship and fixation remain the core principles.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\" style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">In 2025, the D.C. Circuit confirmed that the Copyright Act requires human authorship and does not permit copyright registration for works generated autonomously by AI.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\" style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">The Copyright Office has taken the same position: AI-assisted works may be protectable, but purely AI-generated material, or material reflecting insufficient human control over expressive elements, is not.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\" style=\"list-style-type:disc\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">For businesses, the practical question is not whether AI may be used to create content \u2014 it may. The question is whether the business can identify and document enough human-authored expression to support ownership, registration and enforcement.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:28px\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">Businesses across industries now use generative AI to draft advertising and website text, create images and presentations, generate software code and develop product concepts. As that use becomes more common, so does an increasingly important question: who, if anyone, owns the output?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:28px\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">The answer begins with familiar copyright doctrine. Section 102(a) protects only \u201coriginal works of authorship,\u201d and the Supreme Court has long held that originality requires independent creation plus at least a modicum of creativity.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">1<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\"> Copyright also depends on authorship, which the Court has described as the person \u201cto whom anything owes its origin.\u201d<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">2<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\"> In the AI context, that makes human authorship the central issue.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top:24px; margin-bottom:5px\"><span style=\"font-weight:700; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">Human Authorship Still Controls<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:28px\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">The clearest recent appellate authority is <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Thaler v. Perlmutter<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">. There, registration was sought for a visual work wholly generated by AI. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the refusal to register, holding that \u201cthe Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.\u201d<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">3<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\"> The court emphasized that authors are central to the statutory scheme and relied on Sections 102(a) and 201(a).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:28px\"><span style=\"font-weight:400; font-variant:normal; white-space:pre-wrap\"><span style=\"font-style:normal\">The Copyright Office\u2019s&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/who-owns-ai-generated-content-human-1509048\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Human Authorship Still Controls, and Documenting the Creation Process Is Critical&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/jdsupra-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/profile-images\/og.13597_1843.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-245516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-generative-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245519,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245516\/revisions\/245519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}