Edvard Pettersson reports that the Ninth Circuit upheld dismissal of anonymous open source programmers’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims against GitHub and OpenAI over Copilot and Codex. Judge Eric Miller held that the tools create new works rather than copying protected code and stripping its copyright management information, so the DMCA claim fails, and declined the plaintiffs’ invitation to ‘transform run-of-the-mill copyright infringement claims into DMCA claims’ while expressing no view on whether Copilot’s output is substantially similar to existing code. The panel found the programmers had standing, leaving ordinary copyright claims open even though the higher-damages DMCA theory did not survive.
Coders lose appeal in copyright fight against AI tools
Edvard Pettersson reports that the Ninth Circuit upheld dismissal of anonymous open source programmers' Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims against GitHub and OpenAI over Copilot and Codex. Judge Eric Miller held that the tools create new works rather than copying protected code and stripping its copyright management information, so the DMCA claim fails, and declined the plaintiffs' invitation to 'transform run-of-the-mill copyright infringement claims into DMCA claims' while expressing no view on whether Copilot's output is substantially similar to existing code. The panel found the programmers had standing, leaving ordinary copyright claims open even though the higher-damages DMCA theory did not survive.
Source: Courthousenews