Paradise Lost?: The Copyright Registry Rejects Registration of AI Artwork

Via the Order  dated August 31, 2026 [“the Order”], in the case of “In Re Application Of Dr. Stephen L. Thaler for Registration of Copyright in the Artistic Work “A Recent Entrance To Paradise””, the Copyright Registrar rejected the application to register a copyright for the AI-generated artwork “A Recent Entrance To Paradise”.

The Applicant, Dr Stephen L Thaler, sought to record DABUS [Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience], an artificial-intelligence system, as the work’s true author. The application was rejected, the Office affirming that a legally recognised person, whether natural or juristic, is a non-negotiable prerequisite for both statutory authorship and subsequent title.

Crucially, the application listed as the ‘author’ DABUS, and not Dr Thaler. The initial and subsequent procedural steps involve the Office’s identification of fundamental legal issues concerning this claim. 

FACTS

Dr. Thaler, a US-based computer scientist, applied to register the artwork “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” [first published in the USA in 2016], naming DABUS as author and himself only as owner. 2. On scrutiny, the Copyright Office found that DABUS was not a natural or juristic person recognised in law, and issued a discrepancy letter dated 31.07.2023.

Dr Thaler was afforded multiple opportunities to address objections relating to the absence of a legally recognised person as author and first owner, the required minimum degree of creativity, and the subsequent unresolvable dichotomy between the identified author and the claimed human owner. At the final hearing, the applicant was offered the chance to amend the record and name himself as author; he declined, offering only a conditional alternative [himself as author, provided DABUS was also tagged as “generator”].

Despite the opportunities available, ultimately, the Order confirms the rejection of the application, on the sole ground that the core and continuing case of the applicant is that the work's author is an entity devoid of legal personality.

ANALYSIS

The Registrar supported that reading with the same word same meaning principle from Raghubans Narain Singh v. U.P. Government to reject the applicant's attempt to borrow the wider meaning of person used for film producers under Section 2[d][v] and 2[uu], and relied on Indian Performing Right Society Ltd. v. Eastern India Motion Pictures Association for the settled requirement that copyright can only pass through a valid written assignment, which DABUS, having no legal personality, could never execute.

Because Dr. Thaler designed, installed, selected the photographs, linguistic material, and set the process going, the Registrar held that he and not DABUS was the author in fact, a conclusion which was a mixed blessing for the petitioner since despite being helpful to his overall position, he declined the opportunity, when presented directly at the hearing, to amend the authorship claim.

Practically, the order has important implications for India's copyright regime regarding generative AI in creative works. This is the first reasoned order from the Copyright Office on the matter, and it is consistent with the Indian Patent Office’s 2026 order rejecting the analogous patent application by Thaler for DABUS. Indian IPR offices consistently hold that Parliament has not demonstrated sufficient intent for copyright and patent laws to treat AI systems as authors or inventors absent specific legislative guidance.

Indian IPR offices consistently hold that Parliament has not demonstrated sufficient intent for copyright and patent laws to treat AI systems as authors or inventors absent specific legislative guidance. At the same time, by distinguishing between originality and authorship, and by interpreting Section 2[d][vi] to include computer-generated works as a type of work, if properly registered with the correct person as the author, India has a more flexible approach than the US courts in the Thaler v. Perlmutter case regarding this same artwork. The latter rejected copyright protection for a computer-generated work due to the lack of a specific statutory provision authorising such works, thereby requiring works to have a human author as a matter of law.

Consequently, the ratio decidendi for this order is that Section 2[d][vi] of the Copyright Act, 1957 does not deny copyright protection for works generated by computer algorithm processes that demonstrate a minimal level of creative arrangement, but the author of such work is always the natural or juristic person who conceives and directs the generative process, and never the AI system itself, which executes the computations.