by Dennis Crouch
The Solicitor General has filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to deny certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, the case testing whether artificial intelligence can be recognized as an author under copyright law. The government's opposition takes a notably restrained approach, relying entirely on statutory interpretation while avoiding the policy arguments about innovation incentives and economic impact that have dominated public discourse. The brief includes a strategic reframing of the question presented -- attempting to narrow the case its unusual facts while leaving open the genuinely difficult questions about human-AI collaboration that will define copyright's future in the near term. Brief for the Respondents in Opposition, Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 25-449 (U.S. Jan. 2026).
The case arises from computer scientist Stephen Thaler's application to register copyright in "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," a visual artwork generated by his AI system called the "Creativity Machine." Thaler's application listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author and stated the work was "created autonomously by machine" without any human creative contribution.
The Trump Administration brief is notable for its restrained approach, relying entirely on statutory text and structure without invoking policy arguments about innovation or economic impact. At the same time, the government's framing of the human authorship requirement appears more permissive than the Copyright Office's recent registration decisions have suggested. The brief quotes the district court opinion for the proposition that that copyright protection remains available for AI-assisted works in very broad terms:
The rule requires only that the author of that work be a human being—the person who created, operated, or used artificial intelligence—and not the machine itself.
This language could be read to encompass a broader range of AI users than the Office has previously accepted.
In these situations, the US Gov't brief will be signed by lawyers from both the DOJ and Copyright Office. In this case, we only see DOJ attorneys, which suggests some disagreement in approach. Of course, the Trump Administration (in control of the DOJ) is currently in litigation to remove the Copyright Registrar Shira Perlmutter, and so a lack of cooperation is not surprising.