Can Artwork Produced by a Machine Receive a Copyright?

Can artwork produced by a machine receive a copyright? I tested this question in the late 1960’s with the U.S. Copyright and Trademark Office. I had a summer job at Graphic Arts Composition, Inc., a division of my father’s printing company in Philadelphia. The company had a Linofilm Phototypesetting system that was controlled by a vacuum tube based input system. One day, the systems went crazy.

The Linofilm Produced and Titled an Artwork The Linofilm typesetter, without any human input, began loading font grids and exposing away. Just for fun I put the photopaper cassette into the film/paper processor and discovered that the typesetter – on its own – had exposed random abstract symbols and then seemingly titled the design with a single word, “Consciousness.”

Click here to see “Consciousness,” the machine-authored artwork.

Subsequently I submitted “Consciousness” to the Copyright Office for copyright. I listed the artist’s name as Linofilm. It was a Linofilm Typesetter self work. Several months passed, and then the Copyright Office notified me that only works by a human author would be accepted. Machine self-created artwork was not copyrightable. The government did comment that it was an unusual and interesting submission.

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