The United States Supreme Court has put an end to Stephen Thaler’s crusade for machine rights. Okay, that’s the sensational news article way of putting it. He wasn’t really crusading for machine rights. He was trying to establish a precedent for claiming copyright in AI-generated works.
I first wrote about this back in May, 2022 (“AI Can Create, But Is It Art?”). At that time, the U.S. Copyright Office had denied registration of “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” This was an image that was generated by Thaler’s AI tool, the Creativity Machine. Thaler had sought to register it as a work for hire made by the machine. The Copyright Office denied registration because it lacked human authorship.
The decision was consistent with appellate court decisions suggesting that stories allegedly written by “non-human spiritual beings” are not protected by copyright, although a human selection or arrangement of them might be. Urantia Found v. Kristen Maaherra, 114 F.3d 955 (9th Cir. 1997). Neither are works created by non-human animals, such as a monkey selfie.
Thaler sought review by the federal district court. Judge Howell affirmed the Copyright Office’s decision, writing that copyright law “has never stretched so far, however, as to protect works generated by new forms of technology operating absent any guiding human hand, as plaintiff urges here. Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”
The Court of Appeals affirmed the refusal of registration. Thaler petitioned for review by the United States Supreme Court. On March 2, 2026, the Court denied review, without comment.
An argument that Thaler advanced in the petition for certiorari was bascially that because images output by a camera are protected by copyright (See Burrow-Giles Lithographic v. Sarony), images generated by a computer should be, too.
The Copyright Office has since published guidance explaining that using AI as a tool in the creative process does not categorically rule out copyright protection. Rather, assessments must be made on a case-by-case basis about the nature and extent of human creativity that was contributed.
The narrowest interpretation of the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari is that it did not see a need to disturb the ruling that a machine cannot be an “author,” for purposes of copyright law. The facts of the case did not present an opportunity to opine on whether, and under what circumstances, a human can claim to be an author of an AI-assisted creation.
Trademark News
Buc-ee’s, a popular chain of gas-and-convenience stores in the South, has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Mickey’s gas stations. According to the complaint:
Consumers are likely to perceive a connection or association as to the source, sponsorship, or affiliation of the parties’ products and services, when in fact none exists, given the similarity of the parties’ logos, trade channels, and consumer bases.
Here are the two logos, side by side for comparison:
Trademark infringement occurs when one company’s logo or other mark is used in commerce in a way that is likely to confuse consumers about the source of a product or service. What do you think, folks? Might a weary traveler mistake a moose for a beaver?
Clean responses only, please.