Machine Learning Is Not Your Copilot: AI System Accused of Violating Open Source Copyright Licenses

As previously reported in this space, the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit has ruled that an AI machine cannot be an inventor because it is not a "natural person." You can read those posts here and here. On November 11, 2022, a group of plaintiffs filed suit in the Northern District of California against several defendants, including GitHub, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, and OpenAI, Inc. and related companies to OpenAI. The issue stems from a product called Copilot and a product integrated into Copilot called Codex. To provide some context of the issue, some backstory may help.