The United States Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a case concerning copyright protections for images generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
By declining this case, the Justices have brought to a close the years-long dispute over whether visuals created by AI are eligible for protection under US copyright law.
Plaintiff Stephen Thaler sought a federal copyright registration in 2018 for an image titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” generated using an AI technology he developed called DABUS.
His application was rejected in 2022 on the grounds that only works with human authors are eligible for copyright protections.
This decision from the US Copyright Office was upheld by a judge in 2023 who called the human input requirement a “bedrock requirement of copyright.” The DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this ruling last year.
Thaler filed a petition with the Supreme Court urging Justices to review his case, suggesting that it was of “paramount importance” due to the rapid rise of AI technology.
While others have unsuccessfully attempted to copyright works generated using AI, their cases differ from Thaler’s in that he listed DABUS as the sole creator of the image, as opposed to submitting an AI-generated image and claiming a role for himself as an author.
This is not the first time that Thaler has unsuccessfully asked the nation’s highest court to hear arguments in a battle over legal protections for AI-generated products.
Around this same time, Thaler filed applications for two patents on products that listed DABUS as the sole inventor. The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected both requests, concluding that the Patent Act limits inventorship to human beings.
Thaler challenged that decision as well, eventually filing a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court, which the Justices declined, leaving the lower court’s ruling intact.
As of November 2025, the Patent Office issued updated guidance clarifying that only human beings can be named as inventors, even if AI played a role in the development process. While “conception” is described as an inherently human act, AI is categorized as a complex tool, such as a piece of lab equipment.
This understanding that human input is essential for works to obtain legal protection was also highlighted in Thaler’s copyright case.
US Circuit Judge Patricia A. Millett, an Obama-era appointee, addressed the need for human authorship under copyright law in the DC Circuit Court’s unanimous opinion in Thaler’s case concerning “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.”
Under the Circuit Court’s interpretation, the current text of US copyright law, when taken as a whole, is “best read as making humanity a necessary condition for authorship.”
“Although the Copyright Act does not define the term ‘author,’ multiple provisions of the act make clear that the term refers to a human rather than a machine,” the Trump Administration argued in a legal brief filed with the Supreme Court in this case.
Reacting to the Justices’ refusal to hear Thaler’s case, his attorneys argued in a statement that the Court’s decision not to weigh in will “irreversibly and negatively [impact] AI development and use in the creative industry during critically important years.”
Despite declining Thaler’s appeal, the Supreme Court maintains the option of taking up a case raising similar issues at some point in the future.
For now, however, the lower court’s interpretation of copyright law as requiring human authorship stands.
