It’s been fun and fascinating to listen to Claude Code inventor and head Boris Cherny over the past 6 months.
Cherny’s now saying that Claude Code is not only writing 100% of the lines of code at Anthropic and other companies, but Claude Code is the one reviewing the computer programs for bugs.
He also recently said that he’s not even vibe coding to Claude to write specific programs anymore. Instead, Cherny has written loops so Claude figures out what to write next. Computer programming now looks like a near automated process in which Claude Code writes the lines of code, reviews and debugs the lines of code, and then figures out what code to improve next.
Is this the end of copyright for computer programs?
It sure seems we are quickly heading in that direction with even the human role as vibe coder diminishing.
In my forthcoming essay “Vibe Coding Authorship,” I propose that Congress should consider enacting sui generis protection for AI-generated computer programs. The sui generis protection for vibe-coded and AI-coded computer programs would last 3 years for registered programs and 1 year for unregistered programs. You can read a preprint draft of my essay on “Vibe Coding Authorship” on SSRN; it will be published by UCLA Law Review Discourse this summer.
My essay analyzes the complications of qualifying as an author when one relies on AI to produce a “100 percent” vibe coded program. But what Cherny describes above takes it a higher level of abstraction and decreased human involvement in the process of coding. That’s where the sui generis protection can potentially steps in — as copyright exits.
My proposal could soon become more relevant than I thought it ever would.