Can companies claim copyright over their LLM-generated codebases?
As tools like Claude Code and Codex become more widely used across industries, will companies be able to claim copyright over their codebases (or products) or impose license restrictions when a significant portion of the code is generated by LLMs?
The code is still technically "written" by employed programmers who only happen to be using the "autocomplete tools" of Claude Code and Codex. So the code written is still the employer's IP under typical employment terms. Nothing changes on that front.
Compilers do not have copyright over the code resulting from instructions given.
LLMs do not have copyright over the ode resulting from instructions given.