Can you copyright codeCode is protected as a literary work, but not the ideas, algorithms or functions behind it

What copyright covers in software

The US Copyright Office says copyright in a computer program extends to all of the copyrightable expression in the program, but does not protect functional aspects such as algorithms, formatting, functions, logic or system design (Circular 61). In the UK, a computer program is a literary work under section 3 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Copying code does not always infringe, and the line between protected code and functional interfaces is contested. In Google v. Oracle (2021) the US Supreme Court assumed, for argument’s sake, that the copied Java API material was copyrightable, and held that Google’s copying was a fair use (opinion). It did not settle whether APIs are protected.

AI-generated code. The US Copyright Office concluded that, with current generally available technology, prompts alone do not give users enough control over the expressive elements to make them the authors of the output (Part 2 report). Code you write, select and arrange yourself can still be protected. The US Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter on 2 March 2026, leaving the human authorship requirement in place (SCOTUSblog).