United States Copyright Office

The United States Copyright Office administers the federal copyright registration and deposit systems and advises Congress and the executive branch on copyright policy. It sits within the Library of Congress, a legislative-branch agency, and is led by the Register of Copyrights, who is appointed and removable by the Librarian of Congress rather than by the President. Shira Perlmutter has held the post since October 2020 (Source: copyright.gov).

Two threads make the Office consequential for AI policy: its multi-part study of copyright and artificial intelligence, whose Part 3 report on generative-AI training became a contested authority in the training-data litigation, and the unresolved dispute over whether the President may remove its Register.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3

The Office's Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 3: Generative AI Training report, issued in May 2025, addressed whether training generative models on copyrighted works is fair use. The report's treatment of the fourth statutory factor — the effect of the use on the potential market for the work — has been read as endorsing a dilution theory under which the output of models trained on a corpus can harm the market for that corpus even without substantially similar reproduction.

That reading placed the report on one side of the central dispute in the training-data cases. In its September 1, 2026 statement of interest in the consolidated OpenAI copyright MDL, the Department of Justice named the report directly, stating that the Register "appeared to endorse a similar theory" to the market-dilution reasoning in *Kadrey v. Meta Platforms*, that "[h]er understanding does not warrant deference" under Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 412 (2024), and that the Register's reasoning was "threadbare" and "ignored all the caselaw emphasizing the required use-by-use analysis" (Statement of Interest of the United States — In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation (September 1, 2026)). The same footnote observed that the Register "is currently challenging her removal."

The Office's earlier guidance runs in a different direction from the training question and is better settled. Its 2023–2024 guidance and the 2023 Thaler v. Perlmutter ruling establish that purely AI-generated works cannot receive US copyright because human authorship is required, and the 2024 Zarya of the Dawn determination allowed registration of a graphic novel's human-authored text but not its Midjourney-generated images (AI Copyright). Sponsors of the NO FAKES Act have described their bill as addressing a gap left by Thaler and existing copyright law.

The removal litigation

Following the purported firing of the Register in May 2025, Perlmutter sued in the District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaration that she had not been lawfully removed, arguing that only the Librarian of Congress holds that authority (Perlmutter v. Blanche, No. 25-cv-1659). The district court denied her motion for a preliminary injunction; the D.C. Circuit granted an injunction pending appeal, allowing her to remain in office (No. 25-5285). After the D.C. Circuit declined to rehear that grant, the administration applied to the Supreme Court for a stay. The Court neither granted nor denied it, deferring decision pending *Trump v. Slaughter* and Trump v. Cook, and the D.C. Circuit held the appeal in abeyance (Source: authorsalliance.org).

The Office's position within the legislative branch distinguishes it from the agencies in those cases. The Register is appointed and removed through the Librarian, raising a separation-of-powers question about whether the President may reach into a legislative-branch agency, rather than the Humphrey's Executor question of for-cause protection within the executive branch.

Trump v. Slaughter was decided on June 29, 2026, overruling Humphrey's Executor and holding the FTC's for-cause removal protections unconstitutional (Trump v. Slaughter). As of the Department of Justice's September 1, 2026 filing, the Register was still challenging her removal (Statement of Interest of the United States — In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation (September 1, 2026)). Whether the D.C. Circuit appeal has resumed from abeyance, and how Slaughter bears on a legislative-branch office, are not recorded here.

Proposed restructuring

In November 2025 Representative Morgan Griffith introduced the Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act (H.R. 6028), which would sever the Copyright Office from the Library of Congress and place it under presidential control, with the Register appointed by the President with Senate confirmation to a ten-year renewable term, and would separately remove the President from the appointment and removal of the Librarian of Congress. Commentators have noted that the change would likely moot the separation-of-powers question in the Perlmutter litigation while raising questions about the Librarian's oversight of the DMCA § 1201 triennial review and about the mandatory deposit program through which the Library acquires published works (Source: authorsalliance.org). Whether the bill has advanced since introduction is not recorded here.

Open questions

• Whether the Perlmutter v. Blanche appeal has resumed following Trump v. Slaughter, and how the Copyright Office's legislative-branch placement affects the analysis.
• Whether any court has addressed the deference owed to the Part 3 report's fair-use analysis, as distinct from the Department of Justice's assertion that none is owed.

Relationships

• contradicts: Statement of Interest of the United States — In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation (September 1, 2026) — the United States disputes the Part 3 report's fourth-factor reasoning and its entitlement to deference
• supports: Kadrey v. Meta — the market-dilution reading the Part 3 report is said to share
• depends-on: AI Copyright
• related: Trump v. Slaughter, NO FAKES Act (federal, proposed), AI Copyright Litigation — Analysis, NYT v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al.