The Artful Jurist

A student of mine raised an interesting issue...  Who owns the copyright if an animal creates a work of art?

Now I'm not using the word "animal" here as the all-inclusive term for anything that's not vegetable or mineral.  (In other words, I don't mean people as animals.)  I'm talking about such occasions as those that sometimes make the news when a zoo or wildlife park is selling two-dimensional "works of art" that are the result of an animal being let loose with a bucket of paint.  You know, like when they let an elephant hold a paint brush with its trunk and have it slather colors over a canvas or piece of paper.

Under current American copyright law, the creator (or, as the statute reads, "author") of a work of art automatically owns the copyright on any piece of art that's created.  But does that mean the elephant of the above referenced scenario is the legal copyright owner?

I can't recall seeing anything in the copyright act that limits the definition of "author" to human beings.  So maybe the elephant, as the author, does own the copyright.  But it does beg the question:  How is the elephant going to take the matter to court if it believes its copyright has been infringed?  (That's going to be a tough cross-examination on the witness stand for the defense attorney.)

Okay, so maybe the person who put the brush in the elephant's trunk and directed it toward the paints is the elephant's joint author for the purposes of copyright.  I suppose the claim could be made.  But courts have ruled that joint authorship only exists when both parties intend to be joint authors.

Sounds like a job for Dr. Doolittle...

"Doctor, please ask the plaintiff elephant to explain to the court what his intentions were when he decided to become a commercial artist."...