Summarizer

Does this apply to their internal use as well? They can really only claim DMCA status on the leaked code if it was authored by humans. Claude attribution in their internal git history would make a strong case that they do not in fact own the copyright to Claude Code itself and are therefore abusing the DMCA system to protect leaked trade secrets rather than protect copyright.

Genuine question: why can they only claim DMCA if the code is written by humans? Does DMCA specify the method of production?

According to the US Copyright Office, fully AI-generated works aren’t eligible for copyright because they don’t have human authors. They’re in the public domain by default. See: https://library.osu.edu/site/copyright/2026/02/06/artificial...

What constitutes "fully AI-generated" when you're in an edit loop between an agent and a human?

Usually, pre-LLM generated code is flagged because people aren't expected to modify it by hand. If you find a bug and track it to the generated code, you are expected to fix the sources and re-generate. This is not at all the case with LLM-generated code - mostly because you can't regenerate it even if you wanted to, as it's not deterministic. That said, I do agree that LLM code is different enough from human code (even just in regards to potential copyright worries) that it should be mentioned that LLMs were used to create it.

What editor you are using has no effect on things like copyright, while software that synthesises code might. In commercial settings you are often required to label your produce and inform about things like 'Made in China' or possible adverse effects of consumption.

A linter or a formatter does not open you up to compliance and copyright issues.

Eh, there are some very good reasons[0] that you would do better to track your usage of LLM derived code (primarily for legal reasons) [0]: https://www.jvt.me/posts/2026/02/25/llm-attribute/

legally speaking.. if you're not sure of the risk- you don't document it.

> legally speaking.. if you're not sure of the risk- you don't document it. Ah, so you kinda maybe sorta absolve yourself of culpability (but not really — "I didn't know this was copyrighted material" didn't grant you copyright), and simultaneously make fixing the potentially compromised codebase ( someone else's job, hopefully) 100x harder because the history of which bits might've been copied was never kept. Solid advice! As ethical as it is practical. By the same measure, junkyards should avoid keeping receipts on the off chance that the catalytic converters some randos bring in after midnight are stolen property. Better not document it. One little trick the legal folks don't want you to know!

You have copyright to a commit authored by you. You (almost certainly) don't have copyright (nobody has) to a commit authored by Claude.

Where is there any legal precedent for that? In some jurisdictions (e.g. the UK) the law is already clear that you own the copyright. In the US it is almost certain that you will be the author. The reports of cases saying otherwise I have been misreported - the courts found the AI could not own the copyright.

It's beyond obvious that a LLM cannot have copyright, any more than a cat or a rock can. The question is whether anyone has or if whatever content generated by a LLM simply does not constitute a work and is thus outside the entire copyright law. As far as I can see, it depends on the extent of the user's creative effort in controlling the LLM's output.

It may be obvious to you, but it has lead to at least one protracted court case in the US: Thaler v. Perlmutter. > The question is whether anyone has or if whatever content generated by a LLM simply does not constitute a work and is thus outside the entire copyright law. Its is going to vary with copyright law. In the UK the question of computer generated works is addressed by copyright law and the answer is "the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken" Its also not a simple case of LLM generated vs human authored. How much work did the human do? What creative input was there? How detailed were the prompts? In jurisdictions where there are doubts about the question, I think code is a tricky one. If the argument that prompts are just instructions to generate code, therefore the code is not covered by copyright, then you could also argue that code is instructions to a compiler to generate code and the resulting binary is not covered by copyright.

The binary should be considered "derived work". Only the original copyright owner has the exclusive right to create or authorize derivative works. Means you are not allowed to compile code unless you have the license to do so. Right?

Yes, so is LLM generated code a derivative work of the prompts? Does it matter how detailed the prompts are? How much the code conforms to what is already written (e.g. writing tests)? It looks like it will be decided on a case by case basis. It will also differ between countries, so if you are distributing software internationally what will be a constraint on treating the code as not copyrightable.

According to the law, if I use Claude to generate something, I hold the copyright granted Claude didn’t verbatim copy another project.

why wouldn't antroipic own it? they generated it?

It is not "beyond obvious" that a cat cannot have copyright, given the lawsuit about a monkey holding copyright [1], and the way PETA tried to used that case as precedent to establish that any animal can hold copyright. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

>Where is there any legal precedent for that? Thaler v. Perlmutter: The D.C. Circuit Court affirmed in March 2025 that the Copyright Act requires works to be authored "in the first instance by a human being," a ruling the Supreme Court left intact by declining to hear the case in 2026. And in the US constitution, https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8... Authors and inventors, courts have ruled, means people. Only people. A monkey taking a selfie with your camera doesn't mean you own a copyright. An AI generating code with your computer is likewise, devoid of any copyright protection.

The Thaler ruling addresses a different point. The ruling says that the LLM cannot be the author. It does not say that the human being using the LLM cannot be the author. The ruling was very clear that it did not address whether a human being was the copyright holder because Thaler waived that argument. the position with a monkey using your camera is similar, and you may or may not hold the copyright depending on what you did - was it pure accident or did you set things up. Opinions on the well known case are mixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput... Where wildlife photographers deliberately set up a shot to be triggered automatically (e.g. by a bird flying through the focus) they do hold the copyright.

Guidance on AI is unambiguous. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ AI generated code has no copyright. And if it DID somehow have copyright, it wouldn't be yours. It would belong to the code it was "trained" on. The code it algorithmically copied. You're trying to have your cake, and eat it too. You could maybe claim your prompts are copyrighted, but that's not what leaked. The AI generated code leaked.

The linked document labeled "Part 2: Copyrightability", section V. "Conclusions" states the following: > the Copyright Office concludes that existing legal doctrines are adequate and appropriate to resolve questions of copyrightability. Copyright law has long adapted to new technology and can enable case-by- case determinations as to whether AI-generated outputs reflect sufficient human contribution to warrant copyright protection. As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements. So the TL;DR basically implies pure slop within the current guidelines outlined in conclusions is NOT copyrightable. However collaboration with an AI copyrightability is determined on a case by case basis. I will preface this all with the standard IANAL, I could be wrong etc, but with the concluding language using "unlikely" copyrightable for slop it sounds less cut and dry than you imply.

That's typical of this site. I hand you a huge volume of evidence explaining why AI generated work cannot be copyrighted. You search for one scrap of text that seems to support your position even when it does not. You have no idea how bad this leak is for Anthropic because with the copyright office, you have a DUTY TO DISCLOSE any AI generated work, and it is fully RETROACTIVE. And what is part of this leak? undercover.ts. https://archive.is/S1bKY Where Claude is specifically instructed to HIDE DISCLOSURE of AI generated work. That's grounds for the copyright office and courts to reject ANY copyright they MIGHT have had a right to. It is one of the WORST things they could have done with regard to copyright. https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/articles/when-registeri...

I merely read the PDF articles you linked, then posted, verbatim, the primary relevant section I could find therein. Nowhere does it say that works involving humans in collaboration with AI can't be copyrighted. The conclusions linked merely state that copyright claims involving AI will be decided on a case by case basis. They MAY reject your claim, they may not. This is all new territory so it will get ironed out in time, however I don't think we've reached full legal consensus on the topic, even when limiting our scope to just US copyright law. I'm interpreting your most recent reply to me as an implication that I'm taking the conclusions you yourself linked out of context. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here, but the 3 linked PDF documents aren't "a mountain of evidence" supporting your argument. Maybe I missed something in one of those documents (very possible), but the conclusions are not how you imply. Whether or not a specific git commit message correctly sites Claude usage or not may further muddy the waters more than IP lawyers are comfortable with at this time (and therefore add inherent risk to current and future copyright claims of said works), but those waters were far from crystal clear in the first place. Again, IANAL, but from my limited layman perspective it does not appear the copyright office plans to, at this moment in time, concisely reject AI collaborated works from copyright. Your most recent link (Finnegan) is from an IP lawyer consortium that says it's better to include attribution and disclosure of AI to avoid current and future claim rejections. Sounds like basic cover-your-ass lawyer speak, but I could be wrong. Full disclosure: I primarily use AI (or rather agentic teams) as N sets of new eyeballs on the current problem at hand, to help debug or bounce ideas off of, so I don't really have much skin in this particular game involving direct code contributions spit out by LLMs. Those that have any risk aversion, should probably proceed with caution. I just find the upending of copyright (and many other) norms by GenAI morbidly fascinating.

> because with the copyright office, you have a DUTY TO DISCLOSE any AI generated work, I was not aware of that. WHo has that duty and when do they have it?

You do, as the developer. Let's circle back to the original comment that started this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47594044 That comment is spot on. Claude adding a co-author to a commit is documentation to put a clear line between code you wrote and code claude generated which does not qualify for copyright protection. The damning thing about this leak is the inclusion of undercover.ts. That means Anthropic has now been caught red handed distributing a tool designed to circumvent copyright law.

can you tell me where exactly in the documents you link to it says that?

Anthropic could at least make a compelling case for the copyright. It becomes legally challenging with regards to ownership if I ever use work equipment for a personal project. If it later takes off they could very well try to claim ownership in its entirety simply because I ran a test once (yes, there's a while silicon valley season for it). I don't know if they'd win, but Anthropic absolutely would be able to claim the creation of that code was done on their hardware. Obviously we aren't employees of theirs, though we are customers that very likely never read what we agreed to in a signup flow.

Using work equipment for a personal project only matters because you signed a contract giving all of your IP to your employer for anything you did with (or sometimes without) your employer's equipment. Anthropic's user agreement does not have a similar agreement.

My point was that they could make a compelling case though, not that they would win. I don't know of ant precedent where the code was literally generated on someone else's system. Its an open question whether that implies any legal right to the work and I could pretty easily see a court accepting the case.

My GitHub fork of anthropics/claude-code just got taken down with a DMCA notice lol It did not have a copy of the leaked code... Anthropic thinking 1) they can unring this bell, and 2) removing forks from people who have contributed (well, what little you can contribute to their repo), is ridiculous. --- DMCA: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2026/03/2026-03-3... GitHub's note at the top says: "Note: Because the reported network that contained the allegedly infringing content was larger than one hundred (100) repositories, and the submitter alleged that all or most of the forks were infringing to the same extent as the parent repository, GitHub processed the takedown notice against the entire network of 8.1K repositories, inclusive of the parent repository."

Here's a codeberg fork I did: https://codeberg.org/wklm/claude-code

I had this happen as well. I opened a support ticket and shortly afterwards, many or all of the non-infringing forks were restored.

I'm also wondering if it's even legally valid? They constantly love to talk about Claude Code being "100%" being vibe coded...and the US legal system is leaning towards that not being copyrightable. It could still be a trade secret, but that doesn't fall under a DMCA take down.

You're confused, AI can't itself hold copyright, but the human who triggered the AI to write the code holds the copyright instead.

IIUC, a person can only claim copyright if they have significantly transformed the output. Unaltered LLM output is not copyrightable per US court decisions. The whole thing is a legal mess. How do you know the LLM did not reproduce existing code? There is an ongoing legal battle in German between GEMA and OpenAI because ChatGPT reproduced parts of existing song lyrics. A court in Munich has found that this violates German copyright law.

I think you're misunderstanding copyright and ownership. A copyright over code means that ONLY you can use that code, and nobody else; otherwise, you can sue them. For example, if you are an arist, you want to protect your IP this way. Yes, AI generated code is not copyrightable but so is most code in general. It is very hard to truly get a copyright for a piece of code. But just because you don't have copyright to something doesn't mean it's not your property. For example, you can buy several movies on DVD and those DVDs will still be your property even though you don't have copyright and if someone does steal those DVDs, it will be considered theft of your property. Similarly, just because the code is AI-generated/not copyrightable, doesn't mean others can just steal it. Think about it - so many codebases are not legally protected as copyrighted material but are absolutely protected by IP laws and enforced by the companies that own them.

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the concepts of copyright and licensing. > but so is most code in general. That's definitely not true. All the code I write has my copyright, unless I waive that right to some other entity. If there was no copyright, there would no licensing. How else could you license your code, if you were not the copyright owner? Have you never seen "Copyright (c) <Authors> 2025" in source code files? The very fact that your code has your copyright is also the reason for things like CLAs. > For example, you can buy several movies on DVD and those DVDs will still be your property even though you don't have copyright That's because artistic works are distributed under a license . Just like software. Licenses have terms under which circumstances a work can be used, modified and redistributed. In the case of DVDs, you are generally not allowed to make your own copies and sell them. In the case of software, that's why you have the various software licenses (proprietory or open-source). > Similarly, just because the code is AI-generated/not copyrightable, doesn't mean others can just steal it. You can't set licensing terms for something that is not copyrightable.

(Not a lawyer.) Huh? Normal property law is plainly not applicable to a non-rival good like information (unlike for instance a physical DVD: if someone takes a DVD from me, I don’t have it anymore). “Intellectual property” is, but it is not so much a legal regime as confusing shorthand for a number of distinct ones: - Trademark law, which applies to markings on copies rather than copies themselves; - Trade secret law, which stops applying when the information escapes into the wild through the secret-holder’s own actions; - Patent law, which definitionally only applies to public knowledge as an incentive to not keep it secret instead; - Publicity rights, which only apply to depictions or discussions of natural persons; - Moral rights, which are mostly about being recognized as the author and even in their strongest incarnations do not restrict unmodified copies; - Database right, which isn’t applicable as we’re not talking about a compendium of things, and anyway does not exist in the US and most other places outside the EU; - Copyright, which you’ve conceded is not applicable here. There’s no “intellectual property” distinct from these things, and none of them are relevant.

See: https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/copyright-office-releases-part...

This is even worse. My Claude Code instance can theoretically write the same code as your instance for a similar prompt. Why should one of us be able to have the copyright?

No the human cannot hold the copyright also. They can own the property rights to the code and protect it. It's not like the rule is "AI cannot copyright stuff but humans can" but rather code is rarely copyrighted and in its case, ownership is much more important. If your code was generated by you and you store it in your system and have property rights over it, you can enforce legal actions even without holding a copyright over the code. In general, it is kind of weird to want to copyright code. How do you patent a for-loop for example

You can definitely copyright code. I think the English term "copyright" is a bit misleading. In German it is "Urheberrecht" (= author's right), which I think is much clearer. If you author something, you have the sole copyright. In fact, in Germany you can't even waive your copyright away. However, you can grant licenses for the use of your work. The difference between copyright and licenses is crucial! By licensing your work, you do not waive your copyright. You still remain the owner. If you publish your code under the GPL and you are the sole author, you can always relicense your code or issue commercial licenses under different terms. > In general, it is kind of weird to want to copyright code. How do you patent a for-loop for example There is a fundamental difference between copyright and patents! Patents require a novel technical contribution and they must be granted by a patent office.

“Loop structure for operations in memory” https://patents.google.com/patent/US9583163B2/en > How do you patent a for-loop for example

Can fully AI‑generated code be copyrightable? Is there evidence that the leaked code was AI-generated?

"Top engineers at Anthropic, OpenAI say AI now writes 100% of their code" https://fortune.com/2026/01/29/100-percent-of-code-at-anthro... > Right now for most products at Anthropic it's effectively 100% just Claude writing - Mike Krieger, chief product officer of Anthropic

The irony of an IP scraper on an absolutely breathtaking, epic scale getting its secret sauce "scraped" - because the whole app is vibe coded (and the vibe coders appear to be oblivious to things like code obfuscation cuz move fast!)... And so now the copy cats can ofc claim this is totally not a copy at all, it's actually Opus. No license violation, no siree! It's fucking hilarious is what it is, it's just too much.

What effect will this have on their IPO? Can someone take the code and make a clone?

What? No. Not legally. You know. Copyright and all that.

What do you mean copyright? If I torrent this and train a model that changes every second m in a sentence to n can I ship as my software?

Something I’ve been thinking about, somewhat related but also tangential to this topic: The more code gets generated by AI, won’t that mean taking source code from a company becomes legal? Isn’t it true that works created with generative AI can’t be copyrighted? I wonder if large companies have throught of this risk. Once a company’s product source code reaches a certain percentage of AI generation it no longer has copyright. Any employee with access can just take it and sell it to someone else, legally, right?

In theory, companies are all going to have an increasingly difficult time suing competitors for copyright infringement. By extension, this is also why, IMO, its important to keep AI generated code out of open source/free software projects. The recent rulings on copyright though also need to be further tested, different judges may have different ideas on what "significant human contribution" looks like. The only thing we know for certain is that the prompt doesn't count. My guess is that instead of enforcing via copyright, companies will use contracts & trade secret laws. Source code and algorithms counts as a trade secret, so in your example copyright doesn't even matter, the employee would be liable for stealing trade secrets. AI generated code slowly stripping the ability of a project to enforce copyright protections though is a much bigger risk for free software.

I wonder if an argument could be made that because the LLM came up with the implementation that it’s not a trade secret? Of course with lease intent is a very important concept. I doubt anyone is getting away with what I described. It’s just interesting stuff to potentially rethink.

Yes because you can be sued for copyright violation if you don't know the origin of one, and not the other.

As an attorney, I know copyright law. (This is not legal advice.) There's nothing about copyright law that says you have to credit an AI coding agent for contributing to your work. The person receiving the code has to perform their due diligence in any case to determine whether the author owns it or has permission from the owner to contribute it.

Can you back this up with legal precedence? To my knowledge, nothing of the sort has been ruled by the courts. Additionally, this raises another big issue. A few years ago, a couple guys used software (what you could argue was a primitive AI) to generated around 70 billion unique pieces of music which amounts to essentially every piece of copyrightable music using standard music scales. Is the fact that they used software to develop this copyrighted material relevant? If not, then their copyright should certainly be legal and every new song should pay them royalties. It seems that using a computer to generate results MUST be added as an additional bit of analysis when it comes to infringement cases and fair use if not a more fundamental acknowledgement that computer-generated content falls under a different category (I'd imagine the real argument would be over how much of the input was human vs how much was the system). Of course, this all sets aside the training of AI using copyrighted works. As it turns out, AI can regurgitate verbatim large sections of copyrighted works (up to 80% according to this study[0]) showing that they are in point of fact outright infringing on those copyrights. Do we blow up current AI to maintain the illusion of copyright or blow up current copyright law to preserve AI? [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.20957

You're asking a lot of very good and thoughtful questions, but none are directly related to the immediate issue, which is "do I have to credit the AI model?". To begin to answer your questions, I would suggest you study the Copyright Office's report (which is also not law, but their guidance for laypeople as written by their staff lawyers) at https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...