Copilot Copyright Case Closed as Appeals Court Rules in Favor of OpenAI and GitHub
OpenAI and Microsoft's GitHub have emerged victorious in a high-profile copyright case over their AI coding tool, Copilot. A federal appeals court ruled on September 16, 2026, that open-source programmers cannot proceed with claims that Copilot failed to provide proper attributions when outputting code.
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court decision dismissing the lawsuit, the first-ever copyright-related case against OpenAI over its generative artificial intelligence products. The ruling effectively closes the door for one legal theory used by copyright owners to pursue claims against AI companies that train large language models.
OpenAI and GitHub had argued that Copilot's output was transformative and therefore not subject to copyright infringement claims. The appeals court agreed, finding that the programmers' lawsuit lacked merit.