Software Copyright Registration Challenges: Making the Best of a Difficult Situation

The panel will discuss the difficulties in obtaining enforceable copyright registrations for computer source code, including version identification, identification and disclaimer of open source or other third-party code, and the unique challenges now posed by the ubiquitous use of AI tools to generate code. Panelists will discuss the USCO’s Guidance on Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence, and the unique questions it raises for owners of software such as: How does fit into the AI-generated-then-fixed-by-a-human guidance for registration? Should engineers be thinking about registration as they’re writing code? How do we document what was AI-generated and not? If there’s a lawsuit, how can we deconstruct what happened into copyrightable and not copyrightable portions of code?