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Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

legallayer.substack.com

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Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#191

Post by ako »

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…

I've created my own DSL, and instruct Claude Code how to generate code for this DSL using skills.

Since this is a new language, and not documented on the web nor on Github, Claude's ability is not based off of stolen IP. At best it's trained on other language concepts, just like we can train ourselves on code on GitHub.

Maybe a good reason to create a new programming language?

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#192

Post by jmyeet »

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 circuits have ruled and be guided by their reasoning, generally. The fact that the Supreme Court declined to grant cert actually carries weight.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#193

Post by jakeydus »

pydry wrote: post #186
tensor wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find the idea that "learning" from code is "stealing" kind of ridiculous.

If you can set a copyright trap and an LLM reproduces it I think it's pretty clear cut that it's more than just "learning". I have seen LLMs do all sorts of crap which was clearly reproduction of training material. This is also why people are most impressed with how much better it is at reproducing boilerplate rather than, say, imaginative new ideas.

Remember last year (?) when one of the major AIs produced a bit of code that included Jeff Geerling's name in a comment?

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#194

Post by greensoap »

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…

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.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#195

Post by TheFirstNubian »

senaevren wrote: post #74
TheFirstNubian wrote: post #69

The elephant in the room, of course, is what constitutes “meaningful human authorship.” However, I cannot shake off the feeling that all user interactions with these AI models are being logged. Perhaps this may turn out to be the bigger concern in a potential legal battle than code authorship.

The meaningful human authorship question is the elephant, agreed, and the regulators have deliberately refused to quantify it for exactly the reason you describe any bright line number becomes a target to game rather than a standard to meet. The logging point is sharper than it might appear. In a copyright dispute over AI-assisted code, interaction logs could cut both ways. A plaintiff trying to establish human autho…

The bit about treating one’s prompt history as a legal document has really struck a nerve with me. I’ve been keeping a separate git history solely for my prompts. Initially, the goals were simple: reuse prompts, turn some into skills, etc. But in light of the insights from the article and the discussions here, I need to treat this practice as serious business.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#196

Post by hackingonempty »

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…

> Prompting Claude generates something that did not exist, through decisions the model makes about structure, naming, pattern, and implementation.

LLMs don't make decisions. Their output is completely determined by an algorithm using the human prompt, fixed weights, and a random seed. No different than the many effects humans use in image or audio editors. Nobody ever questioned whether art made using only those effects on a blank canvas was subject to copyright.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#197

Post by jacquesm »

keithba wrote: post #188
jacquesm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that human owns the copyright on the prompt, not on the work product.

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 accepted as not to create a new work (after all, anybody else inputting the same prompt would have a reasonable expectation of generating the same output modulo some noise due to versioning and possibly other local context).

Claud code and in general AI generated code does not at present create a new work. But the prompt, that part which you input may be sufficiently creative to warrant copyright protection.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#198

Post by jacquesm »

Aerroon wrote: post #161
jacquesm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

He's making a point about responsibility/liability. If you only get copyright for the prompt you make, but not the output, then it's like being responsible only for the prompt, but not the output. Ie he's only responsible for pushing the boulder up the hill. The fact that it rolled down from the hill and crushed someone's house "isn't his fault" (he doesn't get copyright on it).

Well, you are responsible for the consequences. Liability is simply a different thing than copyright.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#199

Post by senaevren »

greensoap wrote: post #178
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…

Also, I don't think there is any example testing the conclusion. There is no case to point at that any of the factors they listed are sufficient to convey authorship. Would love to be pointed to a case where rejecting decisions and redirecting to a different approach was deemed human authorship. What we do know is that you can disclaim the part of the code a human didn't author. In fact, the Copyright Office requires…

You are right that no court has yet ruled that a specific set of human contributions to AI-assisted work was sufficient to establish authorship. What exists is the inverse: the Copyright Office has granted partial registrations where human-authored elements were separated from AI-generated elements, as in Zarya of the Dawn, where the human-written text was protected but the Midjourney images were not. The Allen v. Perlmutter case pending in Colorado is the first direct judicial test of whether iterative prompting and editing can constitute authorship. Until that decision, the positive threshold is genuinely unknown. The piece reflects this in the calibration section at the end, though your point is worth adding to the authorship discussion more explicitly.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#200

Post by generic92034 »

Aerroon wrote: post #161
jacquesm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

He's making a point about responsibility/liability. If you only get copyright for the prompt you make, but not the output, then it's like being responsible only for the prompt, but not the output. Ie he's only responsible for pushing the boulder up the hill. The fact that it rolled down from the hill and crushed someone's house "isn't his fault" (he doesn't get copyright on it).

That is not how responsibility works anywhere. If you are stealing a gun and murder someone with that gun, you are still responsible, even if it is not your gun.
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