Comment by thewebguyd
2 months ago
In theory, companies are all going to have an increasingly difficult time suing competitors for copyright infringement. By extension, this is also why, IMO, its important to keep AI generated code out of open source/free software projects.
The recent rulings on copyright though also need to be further tested, different judges may have different ideas on what "significant human contribution" looks like. The only thing we know for certain is that the prompt doesn't count.
My guess is that instead of enforcing via copyright, companies will use contracts & trade secret laws. Source code and algorithms counts as a trade secret, so in your example copyright doesn't even matter, the employee would be liable for stealing trade secrets.
AI generated code slowly stripping the ability of a project to enforce copyright protections though is a much bigger risk for free software.
I wonder if an argument could be made that because the LLM came up with the implementation that it’s not a trade secret?
Of course with lease intent is a very important concept. I doubt anyone is getting away with what I described.
It’s just interesting stuff to potentially rethink.
Given trade secrets can't be enforced once they are made public and contracts don't bind anyone who hasn't signed them, it's not a great substitute for copyright.
My guess is companies will simply pretend like generated code is copyrighted, file fraudulent DCMA notices if leaks happen and hope no one decides to challenge them in court.