Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Properties

The aim of the thesis is to inquire on the extent to which it’s possible to extend the moral and material rights that come with a copyright onto those intellectual properties that are created with the assistance of or by generative artificial intelligence tools in both the Civil and Common law systems. To reach a satisfactory end to this question I started my analysis by examining the case of Thaler v. Perlmutter, recently closed by a verdict of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The appellant Thaler tried to register the artificial intelligence he had created as the actual author of the picture he presented at the Copyright Office and he himself as the owner of the copyright under the work-for-hire doctrine, but his request was denied mainly due to the lack of human authorship under an interpretation of the intended effects of the US Copyright Act. The appellant moved on to fight this decision multiple times, first at the Federal Court and then at the court of Appeals, but was repeatedly met with the same answer. I prefaced the actual analysis of the sentence by exploring the history of copyrights in both traditions, and by explaining what constitutes an author and an intellectual property. Lastly, I examined the most recent legal provisions on the subject, mainly the new additions to the US Copyright Act, the European AI Act and the Italian law made to meet the requirements of said act (law 132/2025). The results of my research indicate that it will be possible to use AI as a tool to produce human intellectual properties in both traditions, but with less restrictions in countries following common law than compared to those in the Civil law sphere.