A Chinese Court Finds That AI-Generated Images Are Not Protected by Copyright: The Zhangjiagang People’s Court and the ‘Butterfly Chairs’ Case

In this article for DLA Piper, authors Edward Chatterton & Joanne Zhang explore a recent decision by the Zhangjiagang People’s Court in Jiangsu, China, which denied copyright protection for AI-generated works. The dispute, known as the “butterfly chairs” case, involved three Midjourney-generated images depicting jelly-textured, butterfly-shaped chairs in different colors. After sharing the images and prompts publicly on social media to attract manufacturers, the plaintiff entered licensing talks with the defendants. When negotiations failed, the defendants used similar prompts in Midjourney, refined the results, and manufactured chairs based on their final designs.

The court ruled in favor of the defendants, finding that the plaintiff’s images were not copyrightable because they lacked sufficient original human intellectual input. It distinguished between AI-assisted works — where humans provide meaningful creative direction — and predominantly AI-generated works with minimal human involvement. The “butterfly chair” designs fell into the latter category, with the court noting the inherent randomness of AI outputs and the inability to exactly reproduce the original images, even with identical prompts. This unpredictability, along with limited evidence of human-driven creative choices, supported the conclusion that the works were not protectable.

The judgment also established a test for determining copyright eligibility for AI-generated works. To qualify, creators must document their process and show that AI served merely as a tool, with the human user making unique, substantive modifications to shape the final output. Examples include refining prompts, altering parameters, and making iterative adjustments. In this case, the plaintiff failed to provide sufficient proof of such contributions, leading the court to reject the copyright claim and dismiss the infringement allegations…

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