[Opinion] Ninth Circuit Rules Generative AI Outputs Are Not “Stripped Copies” Under the DMCA

Ninth Circuit Rules Generative AI Outputs Are Not “Stripped Copies” Under the DMCA

Introduction On September 16, 2026, the Ninth Circuit held in Doe v. GitHub, Inc. that outputs produced by a generative AI coding tool are newly generated works, not copies of existing works, and therefore fall outside the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) prohibition on removing or altering copyright management information (CMI).1 The court limited that […]

Ninth Circuit opinion has narrowed a “potentially valuable avenue” of AI liability, US practitioners say

The Doe v GitHub ruling closes off a common ancillary claim in AI-copyright ligation, narrowing rights holders’ ability to pursue enhanced DMCA damages against AI developers.