The Supreme Court declined to hear the AI-authorship case Thaler v. Perlmutter

The Supreme Court’s order list for Monday, March 2, 2026 lists “25-449 THALER, STEPHEN V. PERLMUTTER, SHIRA, ET AL.” under “CERTIORARI DENIED,” followed by the line “The petitions for writs of certiorari are denied.” The case asked whether an image generated entirely by an AI system, with no human author, could be registered for copyright; the lower courts had held it could not. A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits: the Court did not decide the question, it simply declined to hear the appeal, which leaves the lower-court decision in place without endorsing or rejecting its reasoning.