German court denies copyright protection for AI-generated logos

A German district court has ruled that three logos created with generative AI don't qualify for copyright protection. The decision lays out detailed criteria for when AI-generated work might cross the threshold into protectable territory.

A plaintiff had created three logos using an AI image generator and posted them on his website. An acquaintance copied the logos without permission and used them on his own site. The plaintiff sued for injunctive relief and deletion. The court dismissed the claim: none of the three logos qualified as a copyright-protected work under Section 2 of Germany's Copyright Act (UrhG).

Writing prompts doesn't make you an author

In its guiding principles, the court stakes out a nuanced position. Whether AI-generated work qualifies for copyright depends on "the extent to which human creative influence is still exercised despite the software-controlled process flow."

The court isn't shutting the door on copyright-protected AI work entirely, but it's setting the bar high: Copyright protection is possible in principle if human intervention—even retroactively or step by step during the prompting process—results in output that "reflects the personality of the prompter."

What matters isn't the effort involved, but the quality of the human contribution. The input must "shape the output in a sufficiently objective and clearly identifiable way", the Gericht legt fest. That standard is only met "if the creative elements incorporated in the prompting dominate the output to such an extent that the object as a whole can be regarded as its author's own original creation."

When exactly an AI-generated product reflects the "personality of the prompter" remains an open question, and it's one courts will likely face more and more often as AI becomes a standard tool in artistic and commercial projects.

Hard work and subscription fees don't earn copyright

The court is remarkably blunt in rejecting several of the plaintiff's arguments. Among other things, he claimed his iterative approach was comparable to a sculptor chiseling a statue step by step. He also argued that using a paid premium version and carefully crafting his prompts demonstrated creative achievement.

The court disagreed: "Copyright law does not reward and protect investment, time spent or diligence, but only the result of a creative activity." It didn't matter whether a paid version of the AI was used or how elaborate the prompt was. "Merely manual activities" don't reflect the personality of the author. Simply picking one AI-generated option from several proposals isn't enough either.

The ruling fits an international trend. The US Copyright Office has already denied copyright protection to AI-generated images in several decisions, including the graphic novel "Zarya of the Dawn" created with Midjourney.

One curious detail: the court suggested the two parties may have pursued the lawsuit primarily out of academic curiosity. The acquaintances had previously gotten into a heated debate about whether AI-generated work could be copyrighted. The plaintiff even told the defendant about his logos ahead of time and explicitly warned him that unauthorized use would lead to a lawsuit. The court noted that issuing legal opinions wasn't its job, but allowed the case to proceed since it couldn't prove the suit was filed in bad faith.