Generative AI Authorship Toolkit: Disclosure Statements, Contribution Logs, and Ownership Clauses

Most AI authorship disputes are decided by paper that nobody wrote: the log nobody kept, the contractor clause nobody updated, the disclosure nobody drafted before clicking "submit." When the examiner asks how the images were made, or a defendant's lawyer asks the same question under oath, the answer is only as good as the records and contracts behind it. These templates are that paper.

How to use this toolkit

The templates follow the life of a work: intake and records (Templates 1 and 2), registration (Templates 3 to 6), ownership and contracts (Templates 7 to 10), protection of process (Template 11), and litigation (Template 12). Each opens with its purpose, its owner, and when to use it, and closes with drafting notes. Bracketed text is a placeholder. Adapt everything to your facts and jurisdiction.

Where the law stands (January 2026). Copyright requires a human author. Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025), affirming Thaler v. Perlmutter, 687 F. Supp. 3d 140 (D.D.C. 2023), held that a machine cannot be an author; Thaler has asked the Supreme Court to review that decision. The Copyright Office's March 2023 registration guidance (88 Fed. Reg. 16,190) requires applicants to disclose and exclude AI-generated material that is more than de minimis, and its January 2025 report, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability, concludes that prompts alone do not give a user sufficient control over the output, while human selection, arrangement, modification, and perceptible human input can be claimed. Jason Allen's challenge to the Office's prompt rule, Allen v. Perlmutter, remains pending in the District of Colorado. For the doctrine, see Copyright in AI-Assisted Works: Human Authorship, Thaler v. Perlmutter, and the Copyright Office Guidance; for the procedure, Registering and Protecting Works Made With Generative AI: A Practical Guide and the AI-Assisted Work Copyright Registration Checklist.

Template 1: AI-use intake questionnaire

Purpose. Collect the facts about how a work was made before anyone registers it, licenses it, warrants it, or sues on it. Owner. The project lead, with counsel reviewing answers for registration or litigation. When to use. A short version at project kickoff; the full version at completion, before any filing or contract; and immediately when a dispute arises.

Questionnaire.

1. Identify the work and list its elements (chapters, pages, images, tracks, levels, modules, campaign assets).
2. For each element, was any generative AI tool used? Name the tool, the model or version if known, and whether it was used through a personal account or an organization's enterprise account.
3. What went into the tool? Prompts; your own sketches, drafts, photographs, or recordings; reference images or text from others (identify the source and any license).
4. Roughly how many outputs were generated for each element, and how was the one used chosen?
5. What did a person do after generation? Describe repainting, rewriting, editing, compositing, re-recording, refactoring, or arranging, and say where the layered or versioned files are.
6. Who else contributed? For each person, state whether they are an employee, a contractor, or a collaborator, and whether a work-for-hire agreement or assignment was signed, and when.
7. Which platform terms applied (tier, date or version of terms, whether the provider may train on your inputs, any limits on commercial use)?
8. Has anyone described the creative process publicly (social media posts, interviews, process videos, portfolio captions)? Collect them.
9. Does the work include third-party material (stock assets, fonts, samples, licensed images)?
10. Has the work been published? Where and when first?
11. Has any part of the work been registered before? List registration numbers.
12. Which inputs, prompts, models, or workflows should be kept confidential?

Drafting notes. Question 8 is there because Zarya of the Dawn was reopened after the Office saw the author's own posts, and because a defendant will find them too. Question 6 matters because the application must identify authors and claimants, 17 U.S.C. § 409, and because ownership of commissioned work depends on writings and their timing. Question 12 protects trade secret status: anything you put in a public filing or a deposit is no longer secret. Keep completed questionnaires with the project file; they are the raw material for Templates 2, 3, and 12.

Template 2: Contribution log

Purpose. A contemporaneous, element-by-element record of who made what, with which tool, and what the human did. Owner. Each creator records entries; the project lead reviews weekly. When to use. Throughout production, starting on day one.

Drafting notes. Record prompt text by reference (PR-118) and store the prompts themselves in a secured repository if they are confidential. A log kept as a regular practice is the kind of record that qualifies as a business record under Fed. R. Evid. 803(6), and voluminous logs can be presented through a summary under Fed. R. Evid. 1006, with the underlying files available. Exports and file metadata will need authentication under Fed. R. Evid. 901. Set a retention period at least as long as the copyright's practical enforcement life, and suspend deletion once a dispute is foreseeable, or risk sanctions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e). The "claim category" column uses the four bins from the guide: fully human; selection, coordination, and arrangement; modification or perceptible input; AI-generated.

Template 3: Registration disclosure statements

Purpose. Model language for the fields where AI disclosure happens. Owner. The applicant or counsel. When to use. Every Standard Application for a work with more than de minimis AI material, and every supplementary registration correcting an older claim.

A. Author Created (and New Material Included). Choose the phrases that describe what a person did:

• "Text."
• "Text and selection, coordination, and arrangement of text and images."
• "2-D artwork (character illustrations)."
• "Modifications to AI-generated imagery (repainting and compositing)."
• "Photographs; editing and compositing."
• "Musical composition and lyrics; sound recording of vocal performance."
• "Computer program code; selection and arrangement of program modules."
• "Audiovisual material; text; selection and arrangement of game assets."

B. Material Excluded. Describe the AI material briefly and accurately:

• "AI-generated images." / "AI-generated background artwork."
• "AI-generated text." / "AI-generated non-player-character dialogue."
• "AI-generated sound recordings." / "AI-generated instrumental tracks."
• "AI-generated source code."
• Add third-party and previously published or registered material on the same screen.

C. Note to Copyright Office (models).

1. Illustrated work. "The author wrote all text and drew all character artwork. Background images on pages [x to y] were generated with an AI image tool and are excluded. On pages [list], the author's own sketches were used as inputs and the generated results were substantially repainted; the sketches and repainting are claimed. Layered files and generation records are available on request."
2. Text work. "The author wrote the manuscript. An AI tool was used for grammar suggestions and to draft [identify passages], which are excluded; all other text was written or substantially rewritten by the author. Version histories are available on request."
3. Software. "The claim covers code written by [company] employees and the program's structure and organization. Code generated by an AI coding assistant and incorporated without substantial modification, principally in [modules], is excluded."

D. Phrases to avoid. "AI-assisted artwork," "prompt engineering," "created using [tool]," "entire work," and any author entry naming an AI system or its developer.

Drafting notes. Describe authorship, not process. The Office's guidance asks for a brief description of excluded AI material, not a technical account, and allows applicants who are unsure to state generally that the work contains AI-generated material. Accuracy matters more than elegance: a knowingly inaccurate application can be disregarded in litigation under 17 U.S.C. § 411(b), and good faith is the defense the Supreme Court recognized in Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., 595 U.S. 178 (2022). Compilation claims rest on 17 U.S.C. § 103, which protects the human selection and arrangement but not the underlying AI material.

Template 4: Response to examiner correspondence

Purpose. Answer an examiner's questions about AI material precisely enough to preserve the claim and the effective date. Owner. Counsel or the applicant, drawing on Templates 1 and 2. When to use. Within the deadline stated in the examiner's message, commonly forty-five days.

Letter skeleton.

Re: Case No. [number], [title]

Thank you for your message of [date] regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the creation of the work.

1. How the work was made. [Two to four sentences: who created what, which elements involved an AI tool, and how.]
2. Elements created by the author. [List by page, track, file, or module: text; character artwork; selection and arrangement; modifications to identified images.]
3. AI-generated material. [List the elements generated by AI and used without substantial human modification.]
4. Modifications. [For representative elements, describe the human changes and refer to attached Exhibits A to C showing the input, the raw output, and the final version.]
5. Proposed claim language. Author Created: "[text]". Material Excluded: "[text]". New Material Included: "[text]".
6. Records. Generation records and layered source files are available if helpful.

Please let us know if any further information would assist.

Drafting notes. Answer only what is asked, and make every statement one you could repeat under oath. The record of correspondence is permanent and binding: Thaler's statements to the Office that his machine acted autonomously foreclosed his later argument that he was the author, both in the district court and on appeal. Be specific about modifications; the Review Board declined to credit Jason Allen's Photoshop work in the Théâtre D'opéra Spatial decision because he did not describe it with enough detail to evaluate. If the examiner's proposed limitation would exclude human work, counterpropose with exhibits rather than arguing about creativity in the abstract. Originality requires only a modicum of creativity, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), so a well-documented modification usually needs no rhetorical help.

Template 5: Request for reconsideration

Purpose. Ask the Office to reverse a refusal, in whole or in part, on a record a court can later review. Owner. Counsel, with the author supplying a declaration and exhibits. When to use. After a refusal worth contesting (Step 6 of Registering and Protecting Works Made With Generative AI: A Practical Guide has a decision table). A first request is due within three months of the date on the refusal letter; a second request, which goes to the Review Board, within three months of the decision on the first. 37 C.F.R. § 202.5(b)(3), (c)(3).

Outline.

1. Subject line. "FIRST RECONSIDERATION" or "SECOND RECONSIDERATION," with the control number and title, § 202.5(d)(2).
2. Request. What was refused, and what you now ask the Office to register.
3. History. Filing, correspondence, and the stated reasons for refusal. A second request must quote and answer each reason given on the first.
4. Human contribution, element by element. A three-column table: the element (page 40 splash), what the author did (drew the figures, fed the sketch to the tool, repainted the result for six hours), and the evidence (Exhibits A-1 to A-3; log entry P-040).
5. Claim language. Proposed Author Created, Material Excluded, and New Material Included entries, plus a narrower fallback.
6. Argument. The choices are the author's own, perceptible in the final work, and original under the modest Feist standard; the refusal treated human input or modification as if it were a prompt; alternatively, the selection and arrangement is registrable as a compilation.
7. Exhibits. Input, raw output, and final side by side; layered-file screenshots; dated log entries; the author's declaration under 28 U.S.C. § 1746.
8. Fee. $350 for a first request or $700 for a second, per claim, under 37 C.F.R. § 201.3; confirm before filing.

Drafting notes. Both levels decide on "the applicant's written submissions," and a second request must address the reasons given on the first, § 202.5(b)(1), (c)(1), so a second request that repeats the first wastes $700. Write for the judge who may read it later. Review of a final refusal is confined to the administrative record and asks whether the decision was arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law, 5 U.S.C. § 706; neither Thaler court would consider an authorship theory Thaler had not put to the Office, though courts do reverse refusals that demand too much creativity, Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, 979 F.2d 242 (D.C. Cir. 1992). Always offer the fallback: Jason Allen's refusal to exclude the Midjourney material is why the Office registered nothing at all. And if someone is copying the work now, a refusal also opens the courthouse door under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a).

Template 6: Correction decision memo for older registrations

Purpose. Decide whether and how to correct a registration that did not disclose AI material, and record why. Owner. Counsel, with the rights owner signing off. When to use. Once for every registration filed since the organization began using generative tools, and again before any demand, takedown, or complaint relies on one.

Memo outline (privileged and confidential):

1. Registration. Number, effective date, claimant, and the Author Created and Limitation of Claim entries as filed.
2. Records. The AI material, element by element, from Template 2 or reconstructed from files and account histories.
3. De minimis or not. Grammar suggestions are assistance; generated images, passages, tracks, or code in the final work are not.
4. Knowledge at filing. Who prepared the application, what that person knew, and whether the filing preceded the March 16, 2023 guidance.
5. Options, from the table below, with a recommendation.
6. Exposure. Pending or threatened disputes, and the § 412 effect of any new filing.
7. Decision. Who decided, when, and the date any correction was filed.

Drafting notes. A supplementary registration cannot change the deposit or the work, and no supporting documents may accompany it, § 202.6(d)(4), (e)(7), so the corrected descriptions must stand on their own. The memo is the good-faith record. Knowledge under § 411(b) means actual knowledge, which willful blindness can supply, Unicolors; on remand the Ninth Circuit found none because the legal point was unsettled at filing, Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., 52 F.4th 1054 (9th Cir. 2022). That helps a 2022 filer far more than one who filed after the guidance announced the duty, and an owner who learns of the problem and does nothing hands the defendant a willful-blindness story. An owner who relies on counsel's advice to prove good faith should expect to waive privilege over that advice, so write the memo for a judge. The filing routine is in Part 10 of the AI-Assisted Work Copyright Registration Checklist.

Template 7: Employee AI-use and ownership policy

Purpose. Tell employees which tools they may use, what they must record, and who owns the result. Owner. Legal and HR, with the creative or engineering lead; each employee signs. When to use. At hiring, at each new tool rollout, and at the annual policy review.

1. Tools. Use only the AI tools in Schedule A, through Company-managed accounts. Do not use personal AI accounts for Company work, or Company accounts for personal projects.

2. Inputs. Do not enter into any AI tool (a) Company confidential information, except in tools Schedule A approves for it; (b) personal data, except as the Privacy Policy permits; or (c) others' material, including another artist's work as a style reference, without the right to use it that way.

3. Records. For work meant for publication, sale, registration, or a client, log AI use as you work, keep drafts, layered files, and generation histories, and tell the project lead before delivery which elements contain AI-generated material.

4. Ownership. Work you create within the scope of your employment, including your selection, arrangement, and modification of AI output, is a work made for hire owned by the Company; to the extent any of it is not, you assign it to the Company. Prompts, prompt libraries, and workflows you develop for Company work are Company confidential information.

5. Excluded work. This policy does not reach work created entirely on your own time, without Company equipment, accounts, or confidential information, that does not relate to the Company's business. [Conform to state law.]

6. Cooperation and notice. During and after employment, you will describe your AI use accurately and sign documents reasonably needed to register or enforce the Company's rights. [Insert the immunity notice required by 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b), or cross-reference the policy containing it.]

Drafting notes. Clause 4 restates what the statute does for employees acting within the scope of employment, 17 U.S.C. § 201(b). Employee status turns on the agency factors in Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989); scope, on the Restatement (Second) of Agency § 228 test (the kind of work the employee was hired to do, done substantially within authorized time and space, at least partly to serve the employer), applied to after-hours software in Avtec Systems, Inc. v. Peiffer, 21 F.3d 568 (4th Cir. 1994). Personal accounts and evening projects sit on that line, so clause 1 keeps them apart. The backup assignment needs a signed writing, 17 U.S.C. § 204(a), which a handbook that disclaims contractual effect does not supply. No policy creates copyright in machine output; for prompts, ownership really means confidentiality, which Template 11 enforces. Clause 5 tracks California Labor Code § 2870 (with the written notice § 2872 requires) and similar statutes in Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington; see Employee Invention Assignment Agreements: Drafting for Enforceability Across Jurisdictions. Without the § 1833(b) notice, an employer cannot recover exemplary damages or attorney's fees under the Defend Trade Secrets Act against the employee who lacked it, and "employee" includes contractors and consultants. 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b)(3), (4).

Template 8: Contractor and agency clauses

Purpose. Get the human authorship you pay for, learn what is machine-made, and receive the records that prove both. Owner. The commissioning party's counsel, or agency counsel when the agency's paper governs. When to use. In the master agreement or statement of work for any creative, content, or code engagement, signed before work begins.

1. Definitions. "AI Tool" means software that generates text, images, audio, video, or code from prompts or other inputs. "AI Material" means any part of a Deliverable generated by an AI Tool and not substantially modified by a person.

2. Permitted use. [Option A: No AI Material in the Deliverables listed in Schedule 1, such as logos, characters, key art, and source code for identified modules.] [Option B: AI Material is permitted if disclosed under Section 3.]

3. Disclosure and records. With each Deliverable, Contractor will deliver a Disclosure Schedule identifying the AI Tools and account tiers used, all AI Material, and the human-authored elements and the work done on them, and will preserve source files and generation records for [three] years.

4. Ownership. Each Deliverable that qualifies is a work made for hire, specially commissioned as [a contribution to a collective work / part of an audiovisual work / a compilation]. To the extent any Deliverable is not, Contractor assigns to Client all right, title, and interest in it, including copyright in the human-authored elements, any rights Contractor holds in AI Material, and the prompts and inputs created for the project.

5. Warranties. Contractor represents that (a) each Disclosure Schedule is accurate and complete; (b) its use of each AI Tool complied with that tool's terms, which permit Client's intended commercial use; (c) it entered no Client confidential information into an unapproved AI Tool; and (d) it did not prompt any AI Tool with a living artist's name or work, or with third-party marks or copyrighted material, without Client's written approval.

6. Protectability. Client acknowledges that AI Material may not be protected by copyright; Contractor makes no representation about registrability beyond the originality of the human-authored elements.

7. Flow-down and remedy. Contractor will impose Sections 2 through 5 on its subcontractors. Client may reject any Deliverable whose Disclosure Schedule is materially inaccurate, in addition to its indemnity rights.

Drafting notes. A contractor's work is made for hire only within the nine categories of 17 U.S.C. § 101 and with a signed writing; logos, stand-alone illustrations, and most software fit no category, so the assignment does the real work. Sign before work starts: the Seventh Circuit requires the work-for-hire writing to precede creation, Schiller & Schmidt, Inc. v. Nordisco Corp., 969 F.2d 410 (7th Cir. 1992), though the Second Circuit accepts a later writing confirming an earlier agreement, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Dumas, 53 F.3d 549 (2d Cir. 1995). With no writing, the client usually holds only an implied nonexclusive license, Effects Associates, Inc. v. Cohen, 908 F.2d 555 (9th Cir. 1990).

Work-for-hire status also forecloses termination. An individual author's assignment can be terminated after thirty-five years "notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary," 17 U.S.C. § 203(a)(5), and the screenwriter of Friday the 13th did exactly that, because he had written the script as an independent contractor rather than an employee, Horror Inc. v. Miller, 15 F.4th 232 (2d Cir. 2021). In California, though, a work-for-hire clause with an individual can make the client a statutory employer for workers' compensation and unemployment insurance (Cal. Lab. Code § 3351.5(c); Cal. Unemp. Ins. Code §§ 621(d), 686), so many California-facing forms use the assignment alone; see Independent Contractor or Employee? Worker Classification Under the FLSA, the IRS Test, and State ABC Laws. A waiver of rights in a work of visual art must be signed and identify the work and uses, 17 U.S.C. § 106A(e); a generic moral-rights waiver will not do.

In negotiation, clients want Option A for anything they will register, enforce, or brand; agencies want Section 6 and no warranty of copyrightability. The honest middle is a warranty that the Disclosure Schedule is true, with price following the schedule. See Negotiating a Master Services Agreement and Statement of Work for the surrounding agreement and the AI Licensing Toolkit: Data Provenance Records, License Terms, and Indemnity Clauses for the tools' own terms.

Template 9: Publishing agreement clauses

Purpose. Allocate AI disclosure, originality warranties, the publisher's own AI use, and training rights. Owner. The author's agent or counsel and the publisher's contracts group. When to use. In new book, illustration, audio, and translation agreements, and in amendments when either side proposes AI use or an AI license.

1. Disclosure. Before delivery, Author will identify in writing any text, images, or other material in the Work generated by an AI tool. Use of AI tools only for research, brainstorming, spelling, grammar, or similar assistance need not be disclosed.

2. Warranty. Except for material disclosed under Section 1 and third-party material listed in Schedule [ ], the Work is original to Author, and Author owns the rights granted.

3. Registration. Publisher will register the copyright in Author's name and describe disclosed AI material as the Copyright Office requires.

4. Publisher's AI use. Publisher will not use AI tools to create translations, narration or voice replicas, cover art, or abridgments without Author's prior written approval [and agreed compensation].

5. Training. No right is granted to use the Work, or to authorize others to use it, to train, fine-tune, or evaluate AI models without Author's separate written consent and compensation.

Drafting notes. Undisclosed AI material breaches the usual originality warranty, since it is no one's original work; the carve-out in Section 2 lets a publisher permit limited AI use without creating a claim against its own author. Section 3 keeps the registration consistent with the disclosure; a publisher that claims "entire text" for a book it knows contains AI passages owns the § 411(b) problem. Platforms ask their own questions: as of this writing, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing counts AI-created text or images as "AI-generated" even after heavy editing, which is not the Copyright Office's line, so reconcile the answers before either is used to impeach the other. Training rights are the new money term; the Authors Guild publishes a model clause reserving them to the author, and the author-side position is title-by-title opt-in with a separate payment. For the rest of the deal, see Negotiating a Publishing or Merchandising License: A Practical Guide and the Publishing and Merchandising Agreement Checklist.

Template 10: Collaboration agreement for human teams

Purpose. Decide who is an author of what before a certificate or a lawsuit decides it. Owner. The collaborators, ideally with counsel. When to use. At the start of any project with two or more human contributors who are not all employees of one company: co-writers, comic teams, indie game teams, bands.

1. Contributions. Schedule A describes each party's contribution, and the contribution log records it. Writing prompts, choosing settings, and running AI tools are recorded as process and count as authorship only if Schedule A says so.

2. Ownership. [Option A: The parties intend their contributions to be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole and to be joint authors, owning the Work in the shares in Schedule B.] [Option B: The parties do not intend to be joint authors. [Name] owns the Work; each other party assigns its rights in its contributions to [Name] for the credit and compensation in Schedule C.]

3. Licensing. No party will assign or exclusively license the Work without the written consent of [all parties]. A party granting a nonexclusive license will account to the others for their shares of the income.

4. Registration and AI use. [Name] will register the Work, naming as authors only those Schedule A identifies and excluding AI material. No party will add unlogged AI material, or enter another party's unreleased contribution into an AI tool whose terms let the provider train on inputs.

5. Credit and departure. Credit follows Schedule C, consistent with Section 2. A departing party's contributions stay in the Work under a perpetual, irrevocable license [or are bought out under Schedule D].

Drafting notes. A joint work requires an intention to merge contributions into a unitary whole, 17 U.S.C. § 101, and most courts also require each co-author to contribute independently copyrightable expression and to share the intent to be co-authors, Childress v. Taylor, 945 F.2d 500 (2d Cir. 1991); Aalmuhammed v. Lee, 202 F.3d 1227 (9th Cir. 2000). Under those tests a teammate who only wrote prompts may own nothing. The Seventh Circuit allows an exception when collaborators set out to create together, the combined result is protectable though no single contribution would be, and their intent to be co-owners is plain, Gaiman v. McFarlane, 360 F.3d 644 (7th Cir. 2004), so Option A has a better chance of making a prompt-writer a co-author there than in the Second or Ninth Circuit. Option B works everywhere; pay non-authors by contract. Without Section 3, any co-owner may grant nonexclusive licenses alone, subject to a duty to account, though one co-owner's retroactive transfer cannot defeat another's infringement claim, Davis v. Blige, 505 F.3d 90 (2d Cir. 2007). Courts read credit as evidence of intent, as with the billing in Thomson v. Larson, 147 F.3d 195 (2d Cir. 1998), so keep Schedule C consistent with Section 2. Background is in Copyright Ownership, Joint Authorship, and Termination of Transfers.

Template 11: Trade secret protocol for prompts and workflows

Purpose. Keep prompt libraries, system prompts, fine-tuning sets, and production pipelines protectable as trade secrets, which do not depend on human authorship. Owner. The workflow owner, with legal and security. When to use. Before a workflow goes into production, and whenever it is shown to a vendor, contractor, client, or audience.

1. Register each asset with a name, a description specific enough to separate it from general knowledge ("system prompt v14 for the character-consistency pipeline," not "our prompts"), an owner, a location, and a date.
2. Restrict and log access by role, and mark the material confidential.
3. Control the tools. Use only enterprise accounts whose terms bar training on inputs and limit retention, and keep the version of the terms in force.
4. Contract for secrecy with employees, contractors, and clients, with the § 1833(b) notice and flow-downs.
5. Police publication. Review process videos, portfolio captions, talks, repositories, registration deposits, and output files before release; some tools write the prompt into the file's metadata.
6. Offboard and respond. Revoke access and recover copies when people leave; document and contain any leak, or any entry of protected material into an unapproved tool.

Drafting notes. A trade secret must derive value from not being generally known and be protected by reasonable measures, 18 U.S.C. § 1839(3); misappropriation is actionable under 18 U.S.C. § 1836. Disclosure ends it: once the secret is disclosed to others, "the holder of the trade secret has lost his property interest" in it, Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986 (1984). Step 5 exists because of that sentence. Measures must be reasonable, not perfect ("perfect security is not optimum security"), and reasonableness is usually a fact question, Rockwell Graphic Systems, Inc. v. DEV Industries, Inc., 925 F.2d 174 (7th Cir. 1991). We know of no appellate decision holding that pasting a secret into a consumer chatbot that may train on it defeats reasonable measures; Step 3 keeps you from becoming the test case. Step 1 is also litigation preparation: a plaintiff must identify its secrets with sufficient particularity, InteliClear, LLC v. ETC Global Holdings, Inc., 978 F.3d 653 (9th Cir. 2020), and courts then protect them under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1)(G) and 18 U.S.C. § 1835; see Identifying Trade Secrets in Litigation: Reasonable Particularity, Sequencing Discovery, and Protecting the Secret While You Sue. A registered prompt's deposit is open to public inspection; if a program you register embeds confidential system prompts, use the trade-secret deposit options in 37 C.F.R. § 202.20(c)(2)(vii).

Template 12: Litigation set: Section 411(b) audit and creative-process discovery

Purpose. Test an AI-assisted registration before it is asserted, or after, and get the records that answer the authorship questions. Owner. Litigation counsel on either side. When to use. Plaintiffs, before the demand letter; defendants, on first reading the complaint and in the first wave of discovery.

A. Audit worksheet.

B. Discovery set (defendant to plaintiff; reverse it for a counterclaim).

• Documents under Fed. R. Civ. P. 34: account exports and generation histories from every AI tool used on the work, including image inputs and settings; native layered files with version histories; the contribution log; communications about how the work was made, including with the Copyright Office; public posts and process videos; and the contracts and platform terms in force.
• Interrogatories under Fed. R. Civ. P. 33: for each element, whether an AI tool generated it and what a person did afterward; each contributor's role and status; who prepared the application and what that person knew.
• Admissions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 36: "Admit that the image on page 12 was generated by [tool] from a text prompt and was not modified before publication."
• Depositions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 30: the author, and a company plaintiff on the creation process, tools and accounts, record retention, and preparation of the application.

Drafting notes. In the Ninth Circuit, no intent to defraud is required once knowledge is shown, Gold Value International Textile, Inc. v. Sanctuary Clothing, LLC, 925 F.3d 1140 (9th Cir. 2019). Once the issue is raised, the court must ask the Register whether the inaccuracy would have mattered, § 411(b)(2), though the Seventh Circuit lets courts demand a threshold showing first, DeliverMed Holdings, LLC v. Schaltenbrand, 734 F.3d 616 (7th Cir. 2013). For a plaintiff, the audit is part of the reasonable inquiry Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b) requires before alleging a valid registration. Creative-process records go to ownership and validity, so they are relevant under Rule 26(b)(1); put confidential prompts under the attorneys'-eyes-only tier of a protective order rather than withholding them (the Trade Secret Litigation Toolkit: Identification Statements, Two-Tier Protective Orders, and Forensic Protocols has the form). Get prompt histories from the party, not the platform. Rule 34 reaches documents in a party's control, which many courts read to include what it can download from its own account, while a subpoena under Fed. R. Civ. P. 45 for stored communications runs into 18 U.S.C. § 2702, which the Ninth Circuit refused to read as containing a civil-discovery exception, Suzlon Energy Ltd. v. Microsoft Corp., 671 F.3d 726 (9th Cir. 2011). Platform exports can be authenticated by certification under Fed. R. Evid. 902(13) and (14). Consumer accounts may purge histories on a schedule, so send preservation demands early; see Litigation Holds, Spoliation, and Rule 37(e): Preserving Electronic Evidence Before It Costs You the Case. Then filter out the unprotected material before comparing, with the Copyright Infringement Litigation Toolkit: Similarity Charts, Expert Reports, and Filtration Analyses.

Frequently asked questions

Which templates does a solo creator actually need?

Templates 1 through 3 for every work you plan to register, Template 4 if an examiner writes, Template 10 the moment someone else contributes, and Template 8 the first time you pay for help. The rest are for companies and litigators.

Can a contract give us copyright in AI-generated output?

No. A contract allocates rights that exist; it cannot supply the human author the Copyright Act requires, which is the point of Thaler v. Perlmutter. It can bind the other party to use restrictions and confidentiality, ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996), which is why Template 8 assigns whatever rights a contractor holds in AI material rather than promising copyright in it.

Are the intake questionnaire and contribution log privileged?

The log is an ordinary business record and will be produced. A questionnaire completed at counsel's request for legal advice may be privileged, but the facts in it are not, and an owner who relies on counsel's advice to prove good faith should expect to waive privilege over that advice. Keep business records and legal analysis in separate files.

How long should we keep generation records?

As long as the work is exploited, plus the three-year limitations period of 17 U.S.C. § 507(b), which most circuits start from discovery of the claim. Once a dispute is reasonably foreseeable, stop deleting anything.

Practical takeaways

• Records come first: Templates 1 and 2 feed every other template.
• Describe authorship, not process, and make every statement to the Office one you would repeat under oath.
• Contest a refusal only with element-by-element evidence and a fallback claim, and build the court record in the first submission.
• Audit older registrations now and correct them before anyone asserts them.
• Use work-for-hire language where a category fits, a signed assignment everywhere, and disclosure schedules for AI material.
• Protect process as a trade secret, and keep it out of everything you publish or deposit.
• In litigation, either side should start with the certificate, the deposit, and the creative-process records.

This document is general information, not legal advice for any particular situation; the law changes, and the facts matter.

Related Documents

Related Articles

• Copyright in AI-Assisted Works: Human Authorship, Thaler v. Perlmutter, and the Copyright Office Guidance: the doctrine behind every template.
• Copyright Ownership, Joint Authorship, and Termination of Transfers: ownership rules for Templates 7, 8, and 10.
• Employee Invention Assignment Agreements: Drafting for Enforceability Across Jurisdictions: state limits on employee assignments.
• Independent Contractor or Employee? Worker Classification Under the FLSA, the IRS Test, and State ABC Laws: classification behind work made for hire.
• Identifying Trade Secrets in Litigation: Reasonable Particularity, Sequencing Discovery, and Protecting the Secret While You Sue: describing a prompt library precisely.
• Proving Copyright Infringement: Access, Substantial Similarity, and the Tests Courts Actually Use: the merits after the registration fight.
• Litigation Holds, Spoliation, and Rule 37(e): Preserving Electronic Evidence Before It Costs You the Case: preserving generation histories.

Related Guides

• Registering and Protecting Works Made With Generative AI: A Practical Guide: the registration steps these templates support.
• Negotiating a Master Services Agreement and Statement of Work: where Template 8 belongs.
• Negotiating a Publishing or Merchandising License: A Practical Guide: the rest of the publishing deal.
• How to Write an Employee Handbook: where Template 7 lives.

Related Checklists

• AI-Assisted Work Copyright Registration Checklist: A Practical Checklist: the filing routine, item by item.
• Work Made for Hire Determination Checklist: A Practical Checklist: categories and timing.
• Publishing and Merchandising Agreement Checklist: ownership diligence before any grant.

Related Toolkits

• Trade Secret Protection Toolkit: Building and Defending a Confidentiality Program: the program around Template 11.
• Trade Secret Litigation Toolkit: Identification Statements, Two-Tier Protective Orders, and Forensic Protocols: protecting prompts during a case.
• Copyright Infringement Litigation Toolkit: Similarity Charts, Expert Reports, and Filtration Analyses: filtering out AI material.
• AI Licensing Toolkit: Data Provenance Records, License Terms, and Indemnity Clauses: clauses for the tools themselves.
• Co-Development Toolkit: Background IP Schedules, Ownership Allocations, and License Grants: ownership between companies.