Comment by senaevren

Fair point and worth being precise about. Cert denial is not meaningless: it leaves the lower court ruling intact, it signals the Court did not find the issue urgent enough to resolve now, and as you note, other circuits will look at the DC Circuit's reasoning. What it does not do is bind other circuits or establish Supreme Court precedent. The distinction matters here because if a Ninth Circuit case involving AI-generated code reaches a different conclusion, that circuit split would be live law regardless of the Thaler cert denial.