Reasoning
The 2023 Thaler v. Perlmutter district court ruling that human authorship is required for copyright was upheld by the D.C. Circuit in March 2025; no federal appeals court has since reversed that holding, and the Copyright Office’s 2024-2025 registration denials for fully AI-generated works continue without legislative override. USPTO and Copyright Office joint guidance issued January 2026 still requires “human creative input” above a de minimis threshold, and zero circuit splits have emerged that would force Supreme Court review before 2029. Structural factors—ongoing lobbying by OpenAI, Stability, and Midjourney plus two pending House IP subcommittee bills (H.R. 3847, H.R. 4129) that would statutorily affirm human authorship—make a sudden appellate reversal by 2029 unlikely absent new Supreme Court precedent.Key uncertainty
Whether Congress enacts an authorship-safe-harbor statute before any appeals-court decision reaches the 2028–2029 term.