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Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

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Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#101

Post by exe34 »

jhbadger wrote: post #3

This is of course assuming you take AI-generated code unchanged. But you don't, in my experience. And that generates a new work fully copyrightable even if the original wasn't. Just like how the fad a decade or so ago of taking Tolstoy and Jane Austen works and adding new elements -- "Android Karenina" and "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" are copyrighted works even if the majority of the text in them was from…

> This is of course assuming you take AI-generated code unchanged. But you don't, in my experience. And that generates a new work fully copyrightable even if the original wasn't.

That's not how copyright works. The modified version is derivative. You can't just take the Linux kernel, make some changes, and slap a new license on it.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#103

Post by nine_k »

qsera wrote: post #99

More interesting question is "Who wants to own it"... The answer is probably "Nobody"!

Depending on the scale. If you ask Clause to one-shot an app from a nebulous description, you get a prototype which you would understandably loathe to own the code of. If you plan carefully and limit the scope, you get code that you understand, can approve of, and are okay owning further down the line.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#104

Post by nine_k »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #102
qsera wrote: post #99

More interesting question is "Who wants to own it"... The answer is probably "Nobody"!

Presumably, every company that has non-LGPL CC code in production wants to own it...

"Own" as in "be responsible for". Nobody is too keen to own a pile of semi-working trash, and extensive vide-coding can produce such piles easily.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#105

Post by curt15 »

nine_k wrote: post #104
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, every company that has non-LGPL CC code in production wants to own it...

"Own" as in "be responsible for". Nobody is too keen to own a pile of semi-working trash, and extensive vide-coding can produce such piles easily.

Not sure why this is being down voted. Outsourcing work doesn't also outsource accountability.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#106

Post by adrianN »

embedding-shape wrote: post #7
jugg1es wrote: post #4

I want this question to have an interesting answer, but everyone knows that if this question ever goes to the courts, ownership will go to the people in charge with the money. The idea that Anthropic may not own Claude Code just because Claude wrote it is wishful thinking.

Best part is, it's likely to have a different answer in every country, who knows what'll happen, not every country implicitly sides with the ones with the most money.

Depends on where they pay their taxes generally.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#107

Post by burnte »

nine_k wrote: post #103
qsera wrote: post #99

More interesting question is "Who wants to own it"... The answer is probably "Nobody"!

Depending on the scale. If you ask Clause to one-shot an app from a nebulous description, you get a prototype which you would understandably loathe to own the code of. If you plan carefully and limit the scope, you get code that you understand, can approve of, and are okay owning further down the line.

I spent two and a half hours writing up a detailed outline for a small webapp. Claude popped it out in one shot 100% working., I added features after but the time you spend on a good outline saves hours later.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#108

Post by CamperBob2 »

senaevren wrote: post #76
hackingonempty wrote: post #65

Nobody disputes that I own the copyright in a sound recording I made just by pushing the red button on my recorder. So it is a mystery to me that copyright to any sort of human conditioned machine generation is in dispute.

The sound recording analogy breaks down at the point where the recorder makes no creative decisions. Pressing record captures what is already there. Prompting Claude generates something that did not exist, through decisions the model makes about structure, naming, pattern, and implementation. The closer analogy is hiring a session musician and telling them the key and tempo. You own the recording under work-for-hire…

Fourier theory says that any sound, however complex, can be synthesized by summing sines and cosines. That's what an LLM does, if you twist the metaphor enough. It synthesizes complex outputs from simpler basis functions that are, or should be, uncopyrightable.

The fact that it inferred those basis functions from studying copyrighted works doesn't seem relevant. Nor does the fact that the "Fourier sums" sometimes coincide with larger fragments of works that are copyrighted. How weird would it be if that didn't happen?

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#109

Post by qsera »

nine_k wrote: post #104
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, every company that has non-LGPL CC code in production wants to own it...

"Own" as in "be responsible for". Nobody is too keen to own a pile of semi-working trash, and extensive vide-coding can produce such piles easily.

Yea, that is how I meant it.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#110

Post by acdha »

jhbadger wrote: post #93
6stringmerc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. This territory was heavily covered in music before this code concept - it has to be “transformative” in the eyes of the law. Even going in and cleaning up code or adding 10-25% new code won’t pass this threshold. Don't bother arguing with me on this, just accept reality and deal with it.

My copy of "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" is explicitly listed as being copyrighted by Ben H. Winters in 2009 despite the majority of the words being Austen's, though. Perhaps music has different rules compared to text. I suspect Winters and his publisher have investigated the legality of this more than either of us have.

Jane Austen died long enough ago that her works are in the public domain, so Winters did not need a license to use it. That does not mean that he gained rights to her work: if he tried to sue someone for use of anything which appeared in the original, he would lose in court because it’s easy to show that copies made before he was born had the same text. This also how they prevent people trying to extend copyright by making minor changes to an existing work: the new copyright only covers the additions.

There’s a very accessible summary of the United States rules here:

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

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