Who owns the code Claude Code wrote? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#201

Post by ako » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:46 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #176

CWuestefeld wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the ability for the agent to build it in the first place is based off of stolen IP. I honestly don't understand why the attitude that underlies this is so prevalent. When I write code, what I write and how I write it is informed by having read countless source code files over my education and my career. Just as I ingest all that experience to fine-tune how my later code is written, so does the LLM from the code i…

> When I write code, what I write and how I write it is informed by having read countless source code files over my education and my career. Just as I ingest all that experience to fine-tune how my later code is written, so does the LLM from the code it's seen. You are presumably human. We have granted humans specific exemptions in copyright law. We have not granted that to LLMs. Why are we so eager to?

Because that allows us to create useful tools that we didn't have before. For me it feels like a carpenter going from a hand-saw to an electrical saw. Still requires the skills of a good carpenter, but faster and easier.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#202

Post by senaevren » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:46 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #192

semiquaver wrote: post #167

> The US Copyright Office confirmed this in January 2025, and the Supreme Court declined to disturb it in March 2026 when it turned away the Thaler appeal. Works predominantly generated by AI without meaningful human authorship are not eligible for copyright protection, and that rule is now settled at the highest judicial level available. Misstates the law. Denial of certiorari can happen for many reasons unrelated t…

The Supreme Court declining to take up an issue is taking a position. Now different circuits can take a different view of the same issue. This is a common reason why the Supreme Court will grant cert: to resolve a circuit split. Appeals court judges know this and have at times (allegedly) intentnionally split to force an issue to the Supreme Court. Even without settling the issue appeals courts will look at how other…

Fair point and worth being precise about. Cert denial is not meaningless: it leaves the lower court ruling intact, it signals the Court did not find the issue urgent enough to resolve now, and as you note, other circuits will look at the DC Circuit's reasoning. What it does not do is bind other circuits or establish Supreme Court precedent. The distinction matters here because if a Ninth Circuit case involving AI-generated code reaches a different conclusion, that circuit split would be live law regardless of the Thaler cert denial.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#203

Post by mbesto » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:48 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #20

bko wrote: post #8

This is all well and good as an intellectual exercise, but in real life none of this matters. Almost no one thinks their code is copyrightable or seriously thinks their code is a moat. I've written the same chunks of code for a number of employers as has every engineer. We've all taken chunks from stack overflow and other places without carefully considering attribution. This comes up in a few places as a kind of vin…

> Almost no one thinks their code is copyrightable or seriously thinks their code is a moat. You'd be surprised! Among non-software management types, they often think of the code as extremely valuable IP and a trade secret. I'm a CTO and I've made comments before to non/less technical peers about how the code (generally speaking) isn't that big of a secret, and I routinely get shocked expressions. In one case the com…

Totally agreed.

I work in M&A. Nearly every lawyer, accountant, investor, and software business owner thinks their code is solely valuable and a trade secret. I find it hilarious and try to be as diplomatic as possible about why it's not. They also willfully will give their client list to a potential acquirer but get super cagey they moment a third party provider asks for their code to be scanned.

This argument easily gets shut down when I asked why, Twitch, a $1B business didn't crater to their competition when their full codebase was leaked.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#204

Post by ikrenji » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:49 PM UTC

the entire US economy rides on AI. no ruling throwing a wrench into the multi trillion engine is ever going to be permitted to happen

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#205

Post by everdrive » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:49 PM UTC

Well I don't own anything I write while working on my company. Maybe my company and Claude can fight over who owns it.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#206

Post by pc86 » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:49 PM UTC

jmaw wrote: post #189

amarant wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could possibly see an argument for the owner being whoever paid for the tokens used, but honestly I think the argument for that is weaker than what you're suggesting; I'm merely playing devil's advocate here. I don't think there's even a valid argument for any other ownership model, or at least none that I can think of.

I see the argument for whoever paid for the tokens. Or in the case of a free AI usage, the person who sent the prompt (or whoever they are acting on behalf of, i.e. the company they are working for at the time). The primary issue being that it's all built on stolen data in the first place.

Even taking the least generous interpretation of what LLMs do and saying they're just "copy/pasting others' code" it's still not stealing because the original still exists and presumably still makes money. The original has to be gone for theft to have occurred.

In order to have a sane conversation about this we have to all agree not to lie.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#207

Post by heikkilevanto » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:50 PM UTC

Ownership is one question. IMO, a more interesting question is who is responsible when the code does some real-life damage.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#208

Post by blks » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

nadermx wrote: post #124

Arcuru wrote: post #115

Personally, I think that the human directing the agent owns the copyright for whatever is produced, but the ability for the agent to build it in the first place is based off of stolen IP. I'm concerned about the copyright 'washing' this enables though, especially in OSS, and I think the right thing for OSS devs to do is to try to publish resulting code with the strongest copyleft licensing that they are comfortable w…

Funny how the copyright industry was able to spin copyright infringment into the pejorative "stealing". If you still have the item, what was stolen? Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985): The Supreme Court ruled that the unauthorized sale of phonorecords of copyrighted musical compositions does not constitute "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" goods under the National Stolen Property Act

“Stolen” as in “profited on IP against terms and conditions of the license”.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#209

Post by keithba » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #197

keithba wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s now how it works. The human using the tool (like claude code, etc) owns the copyright of the code generated.

No, you are wrong about this. See: https://technophilosoph.com/en/2025/02/07/ai-prompts-and-out... If you have a more recent citation referring to case law that states the opposite then that would be great but afaik this article reflects the current state of affairs. The human using the tool creates a prompt, there is then an automatic transformation of the prompt into code. Such automatic transformation is generally…

In the US, the copyright office (as the article you link to says), has declined to define “meaningful” contribution. If you want to argue that the user doesn’t own it for incredibly trivial prompts, I won’t argue (though I consider that to be non-useful code).

Every developer I’ve seen use these tools has have engaged in a meaningful contribution: specific directions across multiple prompts, often (though not always) editing the code afterwards, manually running the code and promoting for changes, etc.

Until the courts, legislators, or the copyright office define something otherwise, I’m highly confident of my assertion. (Mostly because of the insane number of hours I’ve spent with counsel on this. And, as a disclaimer, since I am biased: I worked on Copilot and Google’s various AI assisted coding products as an SVP and VP.)

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#210

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

greensoap wrote: post #194

jmyeet wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Supreme Court declining to take up an issue is taking a position. Now different circuits can take a different view of the same issue. This is a common reason why the Supreme Court will grant cert: to resolve a circuit split. Appeals court judges know this and have at times (allegedly) intentnionally split to force an issue to the Supreme Court. Even without settling the issue appeals courts will look at how other…

the real issue is that the Thaler case was a different question: "Can AI be an author?" and the lower Court said no and SCOTUS left it along. But the question of "what is enough for the human to be the author" wasn't even part of the case. That is completely own checked.

[deleted]