Thaler v. Perlmutter: Why Only Humans Can Hold Copyright

Thaler v. Perlmutter is the case that settled, for now, whether a machine can be an author under US copyright law. The answer, from every court that looked at it: no. Computer scientist Stephen Thaler asked the US Copyright Office to register an image called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” listing his AI system, the “Creativity Machine,” as the sole author. The Office refused. A federal district court agreed. In March 2025, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. And on March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to take the case.

For kids who make things with AI, the most important line in the whole saga is one the appeals court wrote almost as an aside: the human-authorship rule “does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence.” The machine can’t be the author. Your kid can.

Key Takeaways

• Thaler listed the “Creativity Machine” as author and himself as owner of an image he described as “created autonomously by machine.”
• The Copyright Office refused registration in 2019 and its Review Board affirmed in February 2022, citing the human-authorship requirement.
• The D.C. Circuit held on March 18, 2025, that the Copyright Act of 1976 “requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.”
• The Supreme Court denied review on March 2, 2026 (docket 25-449), leaving the ruling in place.
• The court didn’t decide whether Thaler himself could be the author, because he waived that argument before the agency. Cases about how much human input is enough are a separate question.

What Thaler v. Perlmutter Was About

Thaler v. Perlmutter is a lawsuit over a copyright registration. Shira Perlmutter, named as defendant, was the Register of Copyrights, the head of the US Copyright Office. Thaler argued the Office was wrong to refuse registration for a work with no human author.

The details matter, because they made this an unusually clean test. Thaler didn’t claim he made the image with AI help. He told the Office the opposite. In the application, according to the D.C. Circuit’s opinion, he listed the author as the “Creativity Machine,” named himself as the claimant, and described the work as “2-D artwork, Created autonomously by machine.” He sought to register it as a work-for-hire owned by the machine’s owner.

So the only question was: can a machine be an author? Not: how much AI help is too much?

The Case From Filing to the Supreme Court

Date	Step	What happened
2018–2019	Application	Thaler applied to register “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” The Review Board’s letter dates the filing to November 3, 2018; the appeals court’s opinion gives May 19, 2019.
Aug. 12, 2019	First refusal	A Copyright Office specialist refused, finding the work “lacks the human authorship necessary to support a copyright claim.”
Sept. 2019	Reconsideration	Thaler argued the human-authorship requirement was unconstitutional. The Office refused again.
Feb. 14, 2022	Review Board	The Office’s Review Board affirmed the refusal. That was the agency’s final decision.
2022–2023	District court	Thaler sued in the US District Court for D.C. The court ruled that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”
Sept. 19, 2024	Oral argument	The D.C. Circuit heard the appeal.
Mar. 18, 2025	Appeals ruling	Judge Patricia Millett, joined by Judges Wilkins and Rogers, affirmed.
Oct. 9, 2025	Petition	Thaler asked the Supreme Court to hear the case (No. 25-449).
Mar. 2, 2026	Denied	The Supreme Court declined to review it.

Why the Court Said Only Humans Can Be Authors

The D.C. Circuit’s reasoning is surprisingly readable, and much of it is about how the Copyright Act is built. Judge Millett pointed out that the statute’s provisions only make sense if the author is a person. Among the examples in the opinion:

• Ownership. Copyright vests in the author immediately, and the court reasoned that “an entity that cannot own property cannot be an author under the statute.”
• How long it lasts. Copyright generally runs for “the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death.” Machines don’t have lifespans in that sense.
• Inheritance. Termination rights pass to an author’s “widow or widower,” or “surviving children or grandchildren.” The court’s dry note: “Machines, needless to say, have no surviving spouses or heirs.”
• Signatures. Transferring a copyright requires a signed document. “Machines lack signatures.”
• Nationality. Protection for unpublished works doesn’t depend on an author’s “nationality or domicile,” and “machines do not have domiciles.”
• Intentions. Joint works require authors with “the intention” to combine contributions.

The court also noted that other circuits have reached similar conclusions, including the Ninth Circuit’s holding in Naruto v. Slater (2018) that an author “cannot be an animal.” That was the case of a monkey’s selfie.

And it drew a line around policy: if the human-authorship rule ever held back creativity, “that would be a policy argument for Congress to address.”

What the court didn’t decide

Two limits keep this ruling narrower than some headlines suggest.

First, the court did not reach “Dr. Thaler’s argument that he is the work’s author by virtue of making and using the Creativity Machine because that argument was waived before the agency.” He’d told the Office the machine was the author, so he couldn’t switch positions in court.

Second, the court didn’t address the Copyright Office’s argument that the Constitution itself requires human authorship. The statute was enough.

That means the harder question for most families, how much human creativity is enough when someone uses AI?, wasn’t answered here. The Copyright Office addresses it in its January 2025 report, which says prompts alone aren’t enough but human expression, selection, arrangement and modifications can be protected.

Why the Supreme Court Saying No Matters

When the Supreme Court denies certiorari, it isn’t ruling that the lower court was right. It’s choosing not to hear the case. But the practical effect is real: the D.C. Circuit’s decision stands, and no higher court has disturbed it. According to SCOTUSblog’s docket summary, the question Thaler posed was “whether works outputted by an artificial intelligence (AI) system without a direct, traditional authorial contribution by a natural person can be copyrighted.” For now, the answer is no.

What This Means for Young Creators

Your kid’s work with AI can still be theirs

The court was explicit: the rule “requires only that the author of that work be a human being,” meaning the person who created, operated or used the AI, “and not the machine itself.” It also noted the Office “has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence.” Writing a story and using AI for spelling, or drawing a picture and adding an AI background, doesn’t erase your child’s authorship of their parts.

A prompt alone probably isn’t enough

The Thaler case was about zero human contribution. The Copyright Office’s separate guidance covers the in-between. Its January 2025 report concluded that “prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output.” We explain those rules for kids in who owns AI art.

Contest rules often go further than the law

Youth art and writing contests set their own standards. The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, for instance, deem ineligible any entry whose final product is AI-generated, and ask entrants to disclose how they used AI. We cover that in Scholastic Awards and AI.

Honesty is the throughline

Thaler was candid that the machine made the image, which is exactly why his case was a clean test. For kids, the parallel lesson is to say clearly what they made and what AI made. Our guide on teaching kids authorship in an AI world has scripts for that conversation.

What not to do

Don’t tell your kid “the courts banned AI art.” They didn’t. They ruled that a machine can’t be listed as an author. People can still make and share AI-assisted work, and humans can hold copyright in their own contributions to it.

What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months

• Week 4: Your teen can explain the difference between “a machine can’t be an author” and “you can’t use AI.”
• Month 2 red flags: Your child claims AI-only images as their own creations in contests or school, or assumes there are no rules about AI art.
• Month 3 self-check: Ask your child what they’d need to show to prove a project was theirs. If they mention drafts, sketches and a clear note of what AI did, they’ve absorbed the lesson of the case.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Thaler v. Perlmutter decide?

The D.C. Circuit ruled on March 18, 2025, that the Copyright Act requires a human author, so an image Stephen Thaler said was created autonomously by his AI system couldn’t be registered with the machine as author. The court said the rule doesn’t block copyright for work humans make with AI assistance.

Did the Supreme Court rule on AI copyright?

No. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied Thaler’s petition (No. 25-449), meaning it chose not to hear the case. That leaves the D.C. Circuit’s decision in place. Declining review isn’t a ruling on the merits, but it means the human-authorship rule stands for now.

Can my child copyright something they made with AI?

They can hold copyright in their own human contributions, like their writing, drawing, creative edits or arrangement. The Copyright Office says prompts alone aren’t enough to make someone the author of AI output. Thaler’s case involved no human contribution at all, so it doesn’t settle the in-between cases.

Why couldn’t Thaler just say he was the author?

He told the Copyright Office the machine was the author and the work was created autonomously. The appeals court said he waived the argument that he was the author by making and using the AI, because he didn’t raise it before the agency. The court didn’t decide whether that argument would have worked.

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About the author

Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.

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Sources

1. U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. (2025, March 18). Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233 (opinion by Judge Millett). https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2025/03/23-5233.pdf
2. U.S. Copyright Office Review Board. (2022, February 14). “Re: Second Request for Reconsideration for Refusal to Register A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” https://copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf
3. Supreme Court of the United States. Docket No. 25-449, Thaler v. Perlmutter. https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25-449.html
4. SCOTUSblog. “Thaler v. Perlmutter” case file. https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/thaler-v-perlmutter
5. U.S. Copyright Office. (2025, January 29). “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability.” https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf
6. Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. “Copyright & Plagiarism” (AI policy). https://www.artandwriting.org/awards/how-to-enter/copyright-plagiarism/