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Comment by zephen | Hacker News Reader

> Intellectual property does not necessarily have to be copyrightable

The US recognizes exactly 3 types of intellectual property: copyrights, patents, and trademarks.

There are also, of course, trade secrets, but if you didn't surreptitiously gain access to the information and didn't sign any NDA, that's not something you have to worry about.

> as always, nuanced discussion will get lost in clickbaity headlines

Well, yeah, but if a human didn't use enough skill and judgment in creating something, the article is right. He won't be able to copyright it or patent it, although he could conceivably keep it secret.

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> There are also, of course, trade secrets, but if you didn't surreptitiously gain access to the information and didn't sign any NDA, that's not something you have to worry about.

But this is precisely the context of the original webpage: someone writing code at your company and your company not having copyright of that code. Almost everyone that works for any tech company signs an NDA, and code in private repos is just that: private. So even if said intellectual property (AI-written code) is not copyrightable, it's still a trade secret.

This is doubly stupid because I've worked at plenty of companies where we would routinely generate code (using macros or transpilers, or what-have-you), and that code is also not technically copyrightable.

> So even if said intellectual property (AI-written code) is not copyrightable, it's still a trade secret.

It's only a trade secret as long as the company takes reasonable steps to protect it, and as long as what is being protected is a reasonable thing. Even if the code is legitimately a trade secret, if an employee publicly says "That code looks to me almost exactly like this GPL software" then (assuming the employee is correct) any court would take a dim view of a court case against the employee, because stealing shit is against public policy.

> This is doubly stupid because

No, that part really isn't. Trade secrets are about general business stuff, and as long as the company isn't asking you to help them hide evidence of malfeasance, they can ask you to keep any stupid shit secret.

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