Filling the Enforcement Gap: Alternative Dispute Resolution as an Approach to Solving "Copyright" Disputes for AI-Generated Content

Authors

Aly Rezek

Abstract

On August 12, 2019, the United States Copyright Office (“the Copyright Office”) sent Stephen Thaler a rejection letter stating it would not issue him federal copyright protection for artwork generated by a computer program he owned. After countless appeals to the Copyright Office and the Federal District Court under various legal theories, one thing was made clear: The U.S. Copyright system would not protect works created by non-human authors. This principle presents a problem. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is a rapidly developing tool in business and a rapidly developing issue in the law. Courts have routinely held that to be copyrightable, works must be authored by humans. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted this principle in Thaler v. Perlmutter to mean works created purely by AI are not eligible to be copyrighted by the work’s human facilitator. However, courts’ application of the Copyright Act is problematic because AI-generated blog content, computer code, artwork, and other content are valuable to the humans who facilitate its creation. This application creates a gap in the law between protected human-authored and unprotected AI-authored content, even though there is industry benefit to protecting both content types.

Recommended Citation

Aly Rezek, Filling the Enforcement Gap: Alternative Dispute Resolution as an Approach to Solving "Copyright" Disputes for AI-Generated Content, 2024 J. Disp. Resol. (2024)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/jdr/vol2024/iss2/11