Who Owns AI-Generated Content? What the Supreme Court's Silence Means for New Jersey Business Owners

The Supreme Court just left the "human authorship" rule standing. Here is what that means for any business using AI to create logos, marketing copy, and other content.

By Peter J. Lamont, Esq.

If your business uses artificial intelligence to generate a logo, a marketing image, website copy, or product designs, you should know that you may not own the result. On March 2, 2026, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter, the first major case to challenge the rule that copyright protection requires a human author. The Court's refusal to take the case leaves that rule firmly in place, and it has real consequences for business owners throughout New Jersey who are folding AI tools into their day-to-day operations.

This is not an abstract debate for technology companies in Silicon Valley. Business owners across Bergen County and the rest of the state are already using AI to produce content they assume they own. The law says otherwise when no human is doing the creative work. Below, I break down what the case decided, what the "human authorship requirement" actually means, and the practical steps you should take to protect the content your business is creating.

The Case Behind the Headline: A Machine Asked to Be an Author

The dispute started with a computer scientist named Dr. Stephen Thaler. He built an AI system he called the "Creativity Machine" and used it to generate a piece of visual art titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise." When Thaler applied to register the copyright, he did something unusual: he listed the AI system itself as the sole author and stated plainly that the work was created with no human creative input.

The U.S. Copyright Office refused to register it. Its reasoning was simple and long-standing. Copyright protects works of human creation, and this work, by Thaler's own description, had no human creator. Thaler challenged that refusal in federal court and lost at every level. A federal district court agreed with the Copyright Office, and in March 2025 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed, holding that the Copyright Act "requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." When the Supreme Court declined to review that decision in March 2026, the D.C. Circuit's ruling became the settled law of the land for now.

What the "Human Authorship Requirement" Actually Means

The core principle is this: under current U.S. law, a work created entirely by artificial intelligence, with no meaningful human creative contribution, cannot be copyrighted. It falls into the public domain, which means anyone can copy it, use it, or sell it without your permission.

The rule is older than you might expect, and it is not unique to AI. The Copyright Office has long refused to register works "produced by nature, animals, or plants" or by "a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author." This is the same body of law that produced the famous "monkey selfie" dispute, where a photograph taken by an animal could not be copyrighted. AI is just the newest and most economically significant test of a principle the law has applied for more than a century.

It helps to understand where the rule comes from. The Copyright Act protects "original works of authorship" and gives the copyright to the "author" of the work. Much of the statute only makes sense if the author is a human being. Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, which assumes an author who is alive and then dies. Copyrights can be inherited and transferred through signed legal documents, which assumes an author who can sign. A machine has no lifespan and cannot sign a contract, so the courts and the Copyright Office have concluded that Congress wrote these protections with people in mind.

The Critical Distinction: AI as a Tool Versus AI as the Author

Here is the part that matters most for your business, and it is where many owners get the law wrong. The human authorship requirement does not mean that anything touched by AI is uncopyrightable. The law draws a line between using AI as a tool that assists a human creator and using AI as a stand-in for human creativity altogether.

The Copyright Office has registered hundreds of works that involved AI, as long as a human exercised meaningful creative control over the final result. The question is not whether you used AI. The question is whether a person contributed enough original, creative judgment to be considered the author. Selecting, arranging, editing, and meaningfully shaping AI output can qualify. Typing a short prompt and accepting whatever the machine produces generally does not.

That distinction is still being worked out in the courts. There is ongoing litigation over exactly how much human input, including detailed prompting and post-generation editing, is enough to earn copyright protection for an AI-assisted work. The boundary is not perfectly clear yet, and that uncertainty is itself a reason to be careful about how your business creates and documents its content.

Why This Should Concern Every New Jersey Business Owner

Think about how much of your brand lives in content that could now be generated by AI. Your logo. The photographs and graphics on your website. Your social media posts. Product descriptions. Marketing brochures. If a competitor copies a logo your business owns the copyright to, you have legal options. If that same logo was generated entirely by an AI tool with no human creative input, you may own nothing, and your competitor may be free to use it.

The same problem can arrive through your vendors. If you hire a marketing agency or a freelance designer and they quietly use AI to generate your deliverables, you could pay for work that no one can actually own or protect. Many business contracts include language assigning intellectual property to the client, but you cannot assign a copyright that never existed in the first place. This is a growing risk in any agreement where creative work is being produced, and it is one I expect to see litigated more frequently in the coming years. In our New Jersey practice, we regularly help business owners sort out exactly these kinds of ownership and contract questions before they turn into disputes.

Practical Steps to Protect Your Business

You do not need to abandon AI tools. They are useful, and they are not going away. You do need to use them deliberately. Here is what I recommend to business clients.

First, keep a human in the creative seat. For any content that matters to your brand, make sure a real person is exercising genuine creative judgment, including selecting, arranging, editing, and refining the output rather than accepting the first thing the machine generates. The more substantial the human creative contribution, the stronger your claim to ownership.

Second, document the human involvement. Save your prompts, your drafts, your edits, and your revisions. If you ever need to prove that a person, not a machine, authored a work, that paper trail is your evidence. Keep records of who did the creative work and when.

Third, fix your vendor contracts. If you hire designers, marketers, or agencies, your agreements should address AI use directly. Require disclosure of whether and how AI was used, and include representations and warranties about the ownership and originality of what you are paying for. A well-drafted contract can shift the risk and give you recourse if a vendor delivers content you cannot protect. Reviewing and strengthening these agreements is a straightforward fix that prevents expensive problems later.

Fourth, name a human author on any copyright application. If you register a work that involved AI, a human creator must be identified, and you should be prepared to describe that person's creative contribution. Do not list an AI system as the author, and do not overstate the machine's role.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court's decision not to weigh in means the rules are not changing tomorrow. Works created purely by AI remain outside copyright protection, while works in which a human exercises real creative control can still be protected. For business owners, the safest path is to treat AI as a powerful assistant rather than a substitute for human creativity, and to document that human role carefully.

This is a fast-moving area of law, and the line between an AI tool and an AI author is going to be tested repeatedly in the years ahead. If your business relies on content, branding, or creative work, now is a good time to review how that work is being produced and whether you actually own it. At the Law Offices of Peter J. Lamont, we help New Jersey business owners protect their intellectual property and draft the contracts that keep ownership where it belongs.

Contact us today to discuss your business or legal matter. Put our 20+ years of legal experience to work for you.

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For detailed insights and legal assistance on topics discussed in this post, including litigation, contact the Law Offices of Peter J. Lamont at our Bergen County Office. We're here to answer your questions and provide legal advice. Contact us at (201) 904-2211 or email us at  info@pjlesq.com.

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About Peter J. Lamont, Esq.

Peter J. Lamont is a nationally recognized attorney with significant experience in business, contract, litigation, and real estate law. With over two decades of legal practice, he has represented a wide array of businesses, including large international corporations. Peter is known for his practical legal and business advice, prioritizing efficient and cost-effective solutions for his clients.

Peter has an Avvo 10.0 Rating and has been acknowledged as one of America's Most Honored Lawyers since 2011. 201 Magazine and Lawyers of Distinction have also recognized him for being one of the top business and litigation attorneys in New Jersey. His commitment to his clients and the legal community is further evidenced by his active role as a speaker, lecturer, and published author in various legal and business publications.

As the founder of the Law Offices of Peter J. Lamont, Peter brings his Wall Street experience and client-focused approach to New Jersey, offering personalized legal services that align with each client's unique needs and goals​.

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