- Other coverage:
* The Supreme Court doesn't care if you want to copyright your AI-generated art https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-supreme-court-doesnt-care-if...
* U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/02/us-supreme-court-declines-to...
* AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines to review the rule https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-...
- If SCOTUS is saying that AI works, even those co-authored by humans, are not eligible for copyright/patenting;
Doesn't that mean any code-base that uses AI generated code does not have an implicit copyright holder? And thus even the human constructor does not have the right to apply any license [closed/open] onto it whatsoever?
- > If SCOTUS is saying that AI works, even those co-authored by humans, are not eligible for copyright/patenting;
They aren't.
The copyright office isn't either.
Everybody is very explictly saying that if you use say Sora to generate an image and you apply for a copyright with "Sora" as the author it'll be denied.
Same as if you apply for a copyright with "My Dog" as the author.
Authors must be humans and if you do not fill the author field out with a human it's denied. This has nothing to do with the tool used to create the art work.
- That's the position I came to based on these rulings, or lack thereof. I think of all the reasons open source shouldn't accept AI created code is that it can't be protected, and that has the potential to threaten the whole project.
OpenClaw, for instance has an MIT license [0], but, per the creators own words, they didn't even review the code. OpenClaw isn't MIT licensed, the MIT license relies on copyright, and because there was not even human review of the majority of the code, no substantial human input, that code base can't be copyrighted.
No need to steal AI code, it doesn't belong to anyone.
[0] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw?tab=MIT-1-ov-file#readm...
- Given how the models were trained for coding, every single code base that uses any code generated by an LLM should be required to be open sourced, or at least source available.
I'm not saying there is currently a legal president to enforce this, I'm saying ethically it make sense.
- I pretty much agree with you in principle, but I'm also positive this will never happen.
- > Doesn't that mean any code-base that uses AI generated code does not have an implicit copyright holder? And thus even the human constructor does not have the right to apply any license [closed/open] onto it whatsoever?
besides copyright, source code also can be protected as a trade secret.
- For a company with any decent number of people with access to the code base, extremely difficult to maintain that type of protection.
- I mean trade secret as a legal protection: code is declared as trade secret. Then if employee leaks it, and other company uses it, it can be sued.
- That hinges on whether you can convince a judge that your LLM's slop meets the requirement of being inaccessible to other professionals of the same field, and that committing it to your repo meets the bar for keeping it secret.
I wouldn't hold my breath.
- It is not that simple. To have that protection, it needs to be treated (and protected) like an actual secret.
It’s why the nominal ‘top secret’ coke formula is stored in a giant vault.
If everyone at the company has access (and it’s a big company), good luck having that protection.
- https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/wipo-guide-to-trade-se... is likely a good source for the "what constitutes trade secret"
One of the things there though is that trade secrets don't have exclusive rights. If you write code and then distribute the application, trade secrets don't protect it anymore.To enjoy trade secret protection, the above mentioned three criteria (i.e., secrecy, commercial value because of the secrecy, and reasonable steps taken by trade secret holders to maintain secrecy) must be complied with (see section 2.1 for the criteria to be met). Trade secrets can be protected for an unlimited period of time, unless they cease to meet the criteria for trade secret protection. Trade secret holders can seek protection only where unauthorized disclosure, acquisition or use of their trade secrets is made in a manner contrary to honest commercial practice. In other words, they do not enjoy the type of “exclusive rights” that are generally available for other categories of IP. This will be discussed in the next section.There's also a section on trade secrets and digital objects... which includes code ... and that gets into other challenges.
https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/wipo-guide-to-trade-se...
... it also has guidance on trade secrets and LLMs.Copyright is another form of intellectual property protection available to code and algorithms. However, it should be noted that certain jurisdictions do not permit an owner to assert both trade secret and copyright, especially if the copyrighted software discloses a majority of the source code or the “proprietary” portions. In the Capricorn case, the court held that the source code owner was barred from asserting trade secret protection because the code was also registered as a copyright, and thus available to the public. Therefore, the source code owner should carefully consider the pros and cons of each type of protection.https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/wipo-guide-to-trade-se...
- > One of the things there though is that trade secrets don't have exclusive rights. If you write code and then distribute the application, trade secrets don't protect it anymore.
which source says this?
- claude says one needs to take "reasonable steps", which includes asking employee to sign NDA, setting access control, and putting TRADE SECRET disclosure in source files: https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/12/02/fourth-circuit-clarifies-r...
- This would only apply if the codebase were 100% vibe coded. If there is human input - as there is in code, with the role of the software engineer, then it falls into another category for the sake of copyright arguments. And the way it works is copyright is granted automatically and only revoked/denied through litigation.
- Hopefully.
17 points by cainxinth 2 hours ago | 16 comments