--- title: "SCOTUS Declines to Hear LLM-Backed AI Case Regarding Copyright" url: https://daily.dev/posts/scotus-declines-to-hear-llm-backed-ai-case-regarding-copyright-mdh1hhlqp source_url: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2026/mar/04/scotus-deny-cert-dc-circuit-thaler-appeal-llm-ai/ type: article source: "Software Freedom Conservancy" published: 2026-03-04T18:01:54.803Z updated: 2026-05-14T02:13:22.049Z tags: ["llm", "open-source"] reading_time: 4 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # SCOTUS Declines to Hear LLM-Backed AI Case Regarding Copyright **[Software Freedom Conservancy](https://daily.dev/sources/sfconservancy)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary SCOTUS declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter, a case where an AI system was listed as the sole author of an image for copyright registration purposes. The U.S. Copyright Office and DC Circuit Court both rejected the registration, and SCOTUS' denial of certiorari leaves that ruling standing. The Software Freedom Conservancy urges the FOSS community not to panic: the ruling is narrowly scoped to cases where a computer program is identified as the sole author, and does not address copyright in prompts, LLM weights, training data, or human-modified AI outputs. The DC Circuit's own dicta suggests human authors who create, operate, or use AI tools can still hold copyright in resulting works. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The copyright problem with AI-generated code](https://daily.dev/posts/the-copyright-problem-with-ai-generated-code-bouenpdvv) · All Things Open · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI And The Ship of Theseus](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-and-the-ship-of-theseus-pkcywq7xd) · Armin Ronacher · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/scotus-declines-to-hear-llm-backed-ai-case-regarding-copyright-mdh1hhlqp)