The battle over the U.S. Copyright Office’s top official could hold major implications for the future of AI policy in the U.S, and thus the world.

By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief

In the United States, a legal battle over the future of the nation’s top copyright officer, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, is heating up again. In a legal filing last week, Administration lawyers told a Washington D.C. court that a recent Supreme Court decision bolstered their case that President Trump has the power to fire Perlmutter. But in a filing of their own, lawyers for Perlmutter reiterate that the president lacks such authority, arguing that, as an appeals court ruled last fall, the law gives that authority to the U.S. Librarian of Congress.

The legal drama began last May, when Trump purportedly fired Perlmutter, just two days after the shock firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. The firing surprised and outraged stakeholders in the copyright and Intellectual Property communities, who have given Perlmutter high marks for her work at the office, including significant progress on a much-needed modernization effort.

More concerning, however, Perlmutter’s attempted firing came immediately following the prepublication release of the Copyright Office’s third and final part of a wide-ranging AI review, which argued for the rights of copyright owners—an opinion that appears to clash with the president’s AI goals.

Later in May 2025, Perlmutter sued to keep her job. And after a long and winding legal road, the Washington D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals in September 2025 found that the president lacked the authority to fire Perlmutter, and ordered the administration not to obstruct Perlmutter from doing her job.

“The Librarian of Congress—not the President—is authorized by statute to appoint the Register,” the appeals court stated. Furthermore, in June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the administration’s challenge of that decision, leaving the appeals court injunction in place, and Perlmutter in her role as Register while litigation over Trump’s attempted firing continues.

However, also in June, a separate Supreme Court decision, Trump v. Slaughter—which involved the summary dismissal of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the FTC—held that the president has broad discretion to fire employees that work for the executive branch. And in a July 31 brief, administration lawyers told the district court judge hearing Perlmutter’s case that the Slaughter decision gives the president the power to fire Perlmutter, because, despite serving as a subordinate of the Library of Congress, the Register of Copyrights performs some executive branch functions.

“Plaintiff Shira Perlmutter was lawfully removed from her former position as Register of Copyrights,” the filing states, arguing that the constitution gives the president the power to “directly remove the Register of Copyrights, an inferior officer wielding significant executive power,” and that the Slaughter case confirmed “the President’s constitutional authority.”

But in a July 31 brief of their own, lawyers for Perlmutter told the court that the Slaughter ruling does not extend to Perlmutter, and argued that, if it did, the Supreme Court would not have let stand the September 2025 appeals court decision leaving Perlmutter in place. “Because Ms. Perlmutter’s position as Register of Copyrights makes her an inferior officer of the United States who is supervised by the Librarian of Congress, rather than the President,” Perlmutter’s attorneys insist, arguing that the Trump administration’s  “extraordinary theory” of executive power has already been “rejected twice” by the courts.

The battle over the U.S. Copyright Office’s top official could hold major implications for the future of AI policy in the U.S, and thus the world.

In a 23-page report released on July 23, 2025—Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan—the administration proposed that the government refrain from regulating AI at this stage. And despite dozens of lawsuits over unauthorized use of materials for training AI, the report fails to even mention the word copyright, focusing instead on winning what is presented as an AI arms race with China.

As observers have noted, the administration’s AI report is in tension with the findings in the third part of the Copyright Office’s AI report, which, in one section, suggests that using troves of copyrighted works to produce “expressive content” that could compete with books and other materials, especially if “accomplished through illegal access,” would likely go beyond copyright’s fair use boundaries.

However, the lawsuit over Perlmutter’s future could soon be mooted by the U.S. Congress: The U.S. House of representatives recently passed H.R. 6028, which would remove the Copyright Office from under the purview of the Library of Congress and make the Register a presidential appointee. At press time, it is unclear if the U.S. Senate will act on the bill.