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On 7 March 2025, the Changshu People’s Court (in China’s Jiangsu province) announced that it had recently concluded a case on the topical issue of whether AI-generated works can be protected by copyright. In the case, a plaintiff surnamed Lin used the AI tool Midjourney to create an image, and then Photoshop to further refine it. The image depicted a half-heart structure floating on the water in front of a cityscape, in which the other half of the heart was ‘completed’ by its reflection in the water. The plaintiff posted the image on social media and also obtained copyright registration for the image in China. An inflatable model company and a real estate company posted images substantially similar to the plaintiff’s image on their social media accounts and the inflatable model company’s 1688 online store, and also created a real 3D installation based on the image at one of the real estate company’s projects. The court found for the plaintiff, requiring that the inflatable model company publicly apologise to the plaintiff on its Xiaohongshu (RedNote) account for three consecutive days, and that the defendants compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and reasonable expenses totalling RMB 10,000. Although both the plaintiff and the defendants had rights of appeal, neither party appealed and the decision is now effective.

In reaching its decision, the court first examined the Midjourney user agreement which stipulates that the rights in outputs prompted by users belong to the user with very few exceptions. The court then examined the iterative process by which Midjourney users can modify the prompt text and other details of the output images. On this basis, the court held that the plaintiff’s crafting of their prompt and subsequent modification of the image reflected their unique choices and arrangement, making the ultimate image an original work of fine art protected by copyright. The defendants infringed the copyright in that image by disseminating it online without the plaintiff’s permission and using it without naming the plaintiff as the author. However, the court held that the copyright enjoyed by Lin was limited to the 2D image as recorded in the copyright registration certificate (rather than the idea of the 3D half-heart art installation as depicted in the image); the construction of the physical 3D installation by the defendants based on the central idea of Lin’s work (i.e. a half-heart floating on the water, an idea used by many prior works) did not infringe Lin’s copyright.

In the court’s WeChat post, some illustrative comments were shared from Hu Yue, Deputy Director of the court’s Intellectual Property Tribunal. “The premise for AI-generated content to be recognised as a work is that it should be able to reflect the original intellectual input of a human,” Hu states. He comments that “for creators, this judgement is a ‘reassurance’. It clarifies that creators who use AI tools to create have legal copyright over their works provided that the works have innovative design and expression (…) In addition, this case lawfully determined that the use of the ideas and concepts of another person’s work does not constitute infringement, which avoids overprotection of copyrights and abuse of rights, and is conducive to guiding the people on how to further innovate on the basis of using AI.”

Our comments

Cases involving generative AI and IP issues are going through courts around the world. US cases dominate, particularly on the issue of whether use of copyright works to train an AI model constitutes copyright infringement. However, courts in China have been notable for their boldness on the issue of copyright subsistence. Decisions in 2019 and 2020 from the Shenzhen City Nanshan District People’s Court, the Beijing Internet Court and the Beijing Intellectual Property Court have all found that AI-assisted text-based works could be protected by copyright. Most importantly, the Beijing Internet Court in November 2023 issued a significant decision in which it held that the plaintiff enjoyed copyright in an image generated using the AI tool Stable Diffusion. It was critical to the decision that the plaintiff had engaged in a process of “intellectual creation” by independently designing and refining the features of the image through several rounds of input prompts and parameter adjustments, and by making artistic choices regarding the final outcome. Applying similar reasoning, this latest case from the Changshu People’s Court is the second in China granting copyright protection to AI-generated images reflecting the “original intellectual input of a human”.

The relative willingness of Chinese courts to find subsistence of copyright in AI-generated works created by user prompts can be compared with the position in the United States, in which the United States Copyright Office has refused protection for AI-generated visual artworks in at least four cases. Guidance issued by the Office in March 2023 and January 2025 reiterate that: copyright protects only materials that are the product of human creativity; copyright protection is not available for purely AI-generated content, but human contributions to AI-assisted works are protectable, with protection analyzed on a case-by-case basis; and user prompts alone are insufficient to justify copyright protection for the output. The importance attributed to human input is shared with China, however it is safe to say a global consensus on this issue has yet to emerge.

In the meantime, China is becoming a world leader in both AI innovation and regulation. China’s National Intellectual Property Administration in December 2024 issued guidelines on patent applications for AI-related inventions, providing welcome guidance to firms seeking IP protection for innovations involving or assisted by AI. This follows the National Technical Committee 260 on Cybersecurity’s September 2024 release of an AI Safety Governance Framework, outlining principles for tackling AI-related risks in accordance with a “people-centered approach” and the “principle of developing AI for good.”

If you have any questions on this or anything else, please get in touch with the authors or your usual DLA Piper contact.