EUIPO Guidance Bars Copyright for AI-Only Output Under Human Authorship Rule

The European Union Intellectual Property Office issued updated examination guidelines confirming that machine-generated works fail the originality test established in CJEU case C-5/08 Infopaq. Examiners must verify identifiable human intellectual effort at the conception or execution stage. Purely autonomous output from models such as Stable Diffusion or GPT variants therefore falls into the public domain upon creation.

CJEU jurisprudence and national implementations in Germany and France already required human authorship; the EUIPO text simply codifies existing case law rather than creating new doctrine. Data from EUIPO annual reports 2022-2024 show zero registrations granted to applicants claiming sole AI authorship. Parallel US Copyright Office decisions in 2023-2024 reached identical outcomes on identical grounds.

Operational effect is immediate for generative tooling vendors and media pipelines. Any downstream commercial use of raw model output carries no exclusive rights and cannot support infringement claims. Companies must insert documented human editing layers or accept public-domain status. The forthcoming EU AI Act transparency obligations will further require labeling but will not alter the authorship threshold.

Next regulatory step is the 2025 Commission review of the Copyright Directive; no amendment expanding protection to non-human authors is scheduled.