Who if anyone owns copyright of algorithmically produced works? The image below is generated in real time by a Generative Adversarial Network trained on existing works of art (try reloading the page). The process is described in their paper which also demonstrates that it is indistinguishable by humans from art generated by contemporary artists and shown in top art fairs. They make no claim of copyright, freely provide the code that produces it and similar techniques have been used to produce many forms of work that would be copyrightable if produced by a human. Can we say if it would be possible to successfully claim/defend copyright on such work in any way? Has anyone actually managed to defend such a claim? I am aware of the different decisions that have been made around AI as an inventor in patent law, but copyright seems very different. This question is somewhat prompted by this answer, but the question is different. Any jurisdiction would be interesting. Click to see: Generative Adversarial Network produced work of art
germany I am reasonably sure that works like this would be Public Domain, i.e. not copyrighted in the first place. In Germany, copyright (or more precisely, Author's Right) can only be held by a natural person, which is a legal term of art that essentially means &quot;human being&quot;. There are two groups of natural persons involved here: the programmers and the creators of the works which are part of the training set. However, I can't see how either group could have a reasonable claim of copyright. Note: there have been similar discussions about GitHub Copilot, an AI that writes code for you. It is my understanding that the process used by GitHub Copilot is roughly comparable to the process used here. With GitHub Copilot, there have been instances where significant snippets which are part of the training set have appeared in the output with only minor alterations. In this case, it is likely that the original author will have copyright over that portion of the output. However, IFF a human being were actually involved in selecting specific works, then there is probably a copyright based on the creative decision of selecting this particular work and rejecting all the others. This is similar to the classic textbook example of a driftwood sculpture: the creative process here is not creating the sculpture but choosing to pick up this particular piece of driftwood instead of the hundreds of others on the beach. So, if you simply generate these works and publish all of them, there is no copyright. If you generate a large batch and then select a certain number, then the person who made the selection might hold a copyright.
Pseudo-code written down somewhere is protected by copyright, even if the article containing it doesn't say anything about the pseudo-code contained in it (i.e. doesn't mention "this too is copyrighted"). For example, let us assume that the following isn't actual compileable / executable code in some extant programming language: procedure bubbleSort( A : list of sortable items ) n = length(A) repeat swapped = false for i = 1 to n-1 inclusive do /* if this pair is out of order */ if A[i-1] &gt; A[i] then /* swap them and remember something changed */ swap( A[i-1], A[i] ) swapped = true end if end for until not swapped end procedure It does nevertheless constitute an expression of an abstract algorithm. If it can be copied and pasted, it is an expression. If you run this through a filter to create executable code in some language, you will have created a derivative work (and possibly one with no copyright protection, if the conversion is totally automatic). If you read the lines and say "Ah, I know what that would be in Pascal", that has the modicum of creativity required to make your conversion protected, but you've still infringed the underlying work. On the other hand, a logical flow chart, which is a picture of the abstract idea of what to do, is copyright-protected only as a graphic object. If you look at it and it inspires you to write pseudo-code or actual code, you are not copying the flow chart.
Yes, a work with no license is All Rights Reserved, reserved meaning the creator of the work. Who is the creator of the work ? Everyone who contributed it, unanimously. Yes. If people contributed any copyrightable part of your work, in theory you cannot add any license or grant any right to use/reproduce/whatever the work without their unanimous agreement. That's very cumbersome, and almost nobody really does that, but it's what the law is. Big serious companies and repos require contributors to waive their rights on the code they contribute, by agreeing to a contributor's agreement. For example, python/cpython requires you to give your contribs a license allowing the python org to do essentially what they want with it, even though you retain copyright over them. If your project is not so serious, I suggest it should be enough to make the license clear, and that by contributing people are agreeing to place their contribution's code under the license. If it's a free license, that's all you need.
All of your works would be considered to be a derivative work. This is because your work, is based on the work of someone else's. A good test for this to see if something is a derivative work is to see whether the new work can effectively exist without the original. Most copyright laws worldwide are similar, thanks to the Berne Convention for copyrighted works. Since derivative works are normally a right that is exclusive to the copyright holder, you can't make such works without permission (generally through a license or expiry of copyright). So now, let's take a look: The Mona Lisa was made hundreds of years ago. It's definitely in the public domain. You're in no breach of copyright laws here. Yes, of course. Microsoft retains copyright on their icons, and possibly trademarks as well. However, they may have trademark guidance that allows you to use their icons - as long as you follow it. Likely the same as microsoft - you can assume it's similar for most large companies. Code is copyrighted as a literary work - the layout and visual aspect is copyrighted as an artistic work. That artist retains copyright, unless you obtain the work with a license, or the copyright is expired. If you create a derivative work, you infringe on their rights.
However, this uses the text "rights in an invention"; does that cover copyright? Yes. (Is this the correct law?) It certainly seems to be. Does "Relate … to the employer's business" cover the entirety of software engineering, or just the particular software engineering my employer does? Imagine that you work for a company that writes trading software. In your spare time, you develop a photo editing tool. Do you think a court would find that your project "related to the employer's business"? I do not. Or does my employer own copyright on everything down to the love letters I write? Google does not own everything their employees create; they only claim to. If someone challenged them on it, a court would decide, and probably not in their favor.
Generally, it's illegal. You are creating a derivative work and you are not allowed to do that without the permission of the copyright holder. Some jurisdictions may have exceptions, such as fair use under US law. However, this generally protects uses that are intended to comment on or parody the work. It doesn't sound like that is the purpose of your image modification. NOT including: faceswaps, modifications that would shame or affect negatively the reputation of the actors on the image. That doesn't make it legal. I share it in a way that I don't make any economic profit out of it, and clearly stating that it is a modified image (not sure if inside the image, or in the caption under it) and state who is the legal owner of the original image. That doesn't make it legal, either.
Arguably, no one owns the copyright in the general case. This is a similar case to a previous question I've answered. In short, the US has a statutory provision which bars infringing derivatives from gaining copyright. In this particular case, it's helpful to take a look at what the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had to say. While evaluating transformativeness, they did not declare Warhol's works to be derivatives, but left that possibility open and stated it was closer to being a derivative than transformative fair use: Nonetheless, although we do not conclude that the Prince Series works are necessarily derivative works as a matter of law, they are much closer to presenting the same work in a different form, that form being a high-contrast screenprint, than they are to being works that make a transformative use of the original. That Warhol's prints might have no copyright attached to them does not mean that anyone can use them though – they are still very much based on Goldsmith's photo and the underlying copyright to the original still belongs to Goldsmith. This could well mean that Goldsmith would be able to use the Warhol prints as if she owned its copyrights. Update: The Supreme Court has now affirmed, albeit on a narrow appeal from the Second Circuit Court of Appeal which dropped the issue that this question is about. Only the first fair use factor of transformativeness was challenged by the Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF). Additionally, and more important for this question is that only a single use was ruled on: the licensing of one of the prints by AWF for a 2016 magazine article reprint following Prince's death. This is because Goldsmith dropped the wider infringement claims. Here's where I realize I missed a key distinguishing fact in the case: There was indeed a narrow license for use of the photo for &quot;artist reference&quot; in relation to an article to be published in a 1984 Vanity Fair issue. In effect, due to the license, the (probable) derivative could be considered non-infringing1. Nevertheless, the court ruled that the use in the 2016 issue was not fair (given there was no license for use beyond the 1984 article, AWF had to rely on a fair use defense). In other words, the Warhol prints as a whole are not necessarily infringing derivatives2, rather, the specific use in the 2016 article was affirmed to be infringing. In particular, I'd like to highlight the following from court: The fair use provision, and the first factor in particular, requires an analysis of the specific “use” of a copyrighted work that is alleged to be “an infringement.” §107. The same copying may be fair when used for one purpose but not another. The full license text is not in any of the court decisions, so it's impossible for us to know for sure, but the portions that are quoted lead me to believe the license is vaguely worded. In particular, its in the realm of possibility that only the single derivative used on the 1984 article was licensed, but I would argue its reasonable to expect an artist to try multiple derivatives given a license for &quot;artist reference.&quot; This could potentially have been of some consequence as the print used in the 2016 article is not the same as the one used in the 1984 article. But since this case was initiated in district court by the AWF seeking declaratory judgment of non-infringement, my understanding of the matter is that once the case is passed back to the district court, it will enter in that declaration given Goldsmith dropped the wider infringement claims. Take this with a grain of salt, I'm not very well-versed in trial procedure.
What you are missing is that the original copyright holder can give permission to make derivative works with strings attached. There is no automatic right to derive something from a copyrighted work. Those strings could include constraints on what you create in the process of making the derivative work. Yes it is a string limiting what you can do with something you own, but you would have been warned in the license and had the choice to start from scratch. People do create work-alike software with no copyright strings using two teams and a &quot;clean room&quot; design process. It is a lot harder than modifying something another person has developed. Also, law and someone's understanding of morals need not be aligned at all. And, in patent law, just creating something all by yourself from scratch does not give you ownership. If someone else did it first and got a patent you can't make the item you might think you own. IP law is complex and looking for &quot;fundamentals&quot; may not get you anywhere.