The status of generated code is ‘uncopyrightable’, which can be licensed.
Copyright law determines the copyright status and contract law enforces the terms of contracts. They are two separate issues.
If someone licenses you to use their AI generated code and you violate the license agreement, it doesn’t matter that they don’t have a claim under copyright law. They have a claim under contract law due to you violating the terms of the license (which is a contract).
That is the FSF’s position, but the case law has examples of cases where it was allowed to be treated by a contract.
SFC v. Vizio, the Software Freedom Conservancy sued Vizio as a third-party beneficiary of the GPL as a contract, and the court allowed the case to proceed on that theory.
Because in that case the copyright holder is the arbitrator of the terms under which their copyrighted material can be used and reproduced. If they did not own the copyright then any “license” would not be worth the paper it was written on and no judge would allow it to be treated as an implicit contract.
Distributing under the GPL is a software license agreement which is absolutely a contract:
A software license agreement is a legal contract that grants you permission to use software without transferring ownership. The software creator retains intellectual property rights while giving you specific usage rights under defined terms and conditions.
In order to “license” a work, you need to own the copyright.
The status of generated code is ‘uncopyrightable’, which can be licensed.
Copyright law determines the copyright status and contract law enforces the terms of contracts. They are two separate issues.
If someone licenses you to use their AI generated code and you violate the license agreement, it doesn’t matter that they don’t have a claim under copyright law. They have a claim under contract law due to you violating the terms of the license (which is a contract).
The GPL is not a contract.
That is the FSF’s position, but the case law has examples of cases where it was allowed to be treated by a contract.
SFC v. Vizio, the Software Freedom Conservancy sued Vizio as a third-party beneficiary of the GPL as a contract, and the court allowed the case to proceed on that theory.
Because in that case the copyright holder is the arbitrator of the terms under which their copyrighted material can be used and reproduced. If they did not own the copyright then any “license” would not be worth the paper it was written on and no judge would allow it to be treated as an implicit contract.
You’re right, I misread the context (I was trying to carry on multiple simultaneous conversations).
My apologies.
Distributing under the GPL is a software license agreement which is absolutely a contract:
- https://ironcladapp.com/journal/contracts/software-license-agreement