“You win some, you lose some” seems the apt phrase to describe the decision just handed down by India’s Copyright Office regarding the registration of the AI-generated work “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Dr. Stephen won on his contention that the AI-generated work satisfied India Copyright Law’s requirement of originality, but he lost on his contention that the AI (named DABUS) could be considered the author. Instead, Thaler was the author, and the work is copyrightable in India.
US Case: This is the same visual artwork that was at issue in Thaler v. Perlmutter, which the DC Circuit held cannot be registered due to lacking human authorship, a statutory requirement in the United States. Dr. Stephen Thaler took the position on the registration application that there was no human author; instead, the AI named “A Creativity Machine” generated the visual work in question. Because the U.S. Copyright Act requires a human author in the D.C. Circuit’s view (a position shared by the U.S. Copyright Office) and because no human author was even named in the registration application, it failed. A work that was autonomously AI-generated failed the human authorship requirement. But the DC Circuit expressly declined to opine on works that humans prompt engineered.
India Case: Although Thaler took the same strategy in India, he fared much better. Notably, India’s Copyright Act expressly recognizes authorship in “computer-generated” works (similar to a provision in the UK Copyright Act):
Under this provision, “the person who causes the work to be created” is the author of the computer-generated work. That person was Dr. Stephen Thaler, not DABUS or the AI, India’s Copyright Office ruled, rejecting Thaler’s arguments to the contrary that DABUS should be the person.
the ai-generated work “a recent entrance to paradise” satisfied originality and thus can qualify for copyright
India’s Copyright Office also ruled, in the key part of the opinion, that the AI-generated work satisfied originality, meaning it was independently created and has a modicum of creativity (essentially using the standard the U.S. Supreme Court adopted in the seminal case Feist).
thaler can refile an application to register the work listing him as author
At the end of the opinion, the Copyright Office recognized that Thaler can seek “remedy as may be available in law … correctly identifying the author and the corresponding basis of ownership.” But the Office did not allow Thaler to register via this application after “he has declined to adopt” the proposed amended change to who the author is.
download:
