Coders lose their DMCA case against GitHub Copilot and Codex

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a DMCA lawsuit by programmers against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI, ruling that Copilot generates code rather than reproduces it, so the demand to remove authorship information does not apply. Two breach-of-contract claims remain active.

• Court: Copilot is a generator, not a search engine, so DMCA not violated
• Lawsuit sought over $9B; court deemed it 'ruinous liability'
• Theory of license violation during model training deemed lost
• Two breach-of-contract claims continue in California court