You cannot own what an AI wrote
Code written entirely by an AI tool has no human author, so under U.S. copyright law it cannot be copyrighted, and you cannot own it.
For founders, executives, engineering leaders, and counsel
Who owns the code?
No human author. No copyright. Nothing to own.
If a person wrote it, you can own it. If an AI wrote it, no one can. Under current U.S. copyright law, code generated entirely by AI has no human author, so it cannot be copyrighted and cannot be defended as an asset you truly own, license, or sell.
Our guidance applies to code generated from every AI tool
The four things teams miss
Four ways AI code puts ownership at risk
Ownership is not a formality you fix later. It is decided by who authored the work, line by line.
"Vibe coding" is real exposure
When you let the AI make the creative decisions, the code is not human-authored, and code that is not human-authored is not a protectable asset. Prompting, however detailed, is not authorship.
Mixed codebases are only partly yours
In a codebase that mixes human and AI work, you own the parts a person meaningfully wrote. The AI-generated parts stay unprotected until a human reworks them with real creative judgment.
Open source is not "no copyright"
Open source still has an owner; a license only works because someone holds the copyright. An open-source license placed on pure AI output has nothing behind it to enforce.
What the courts and the Copyright Office have said
The core rule is already settled
These are not predictions. Each is a recent decision or report that hardened the rule: no human author, no protection.
- March 2026 Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court declines to hear Thaler; the human-authorship rule stands
The Court declined to review the D.C. Circuit's ruling, leaving the human authorship requirement as settled U.S. copyright law unless Congress acts.
- March 2025 Thaler v. Perlmutter
Works created entirely by AI are not eligible for copyright
The court confirmed that only humans can hold copyright protection; a work generated wholly by a machine has no author the law will recognize.
- February 2025 Thomson Reuters v. Ross
First decision to reject a fair-use defense for AI training
The first ruling to reject a fair-use defense for using copyrighted material to train an AI, narrowing a shield many teams assumed they had.
- January 2025 U.S. Copyright Office report
Only meaningful human creative input earns protection
The Office stated that only the portions of a work carrying meaningful human creative input are eligible for protection. The AI-generated remainder is not.
It is all academic until you get sued, sell the company, or sign the contract
Find out what you actually own
A short assessment identifies your organization's AI-code risk persona, maps where AI-generated code sits in your product, and shows where your ownership quietly breaks down.