Bahamas: parcial. La ley vigente define expresamente la obra generada por computadora como una obra sin autor humano y fija un plazo especial, pero no atribuye en general la autoría al organizador ni resuelve por sí sola categoría, originalidad, conexión territorial o primer titular. La expresión humana asistida sólo es defendible en la medida identificable y separable. Existe registro voluntario y examinado, pero no se verificó un acto individual GenAI.
Investigación abierta. Corte general del Atlas: 31 de agosto de 2026. Cobertura no significa revisión completa ni vigencia certificada.
Marco y alcance
Autonomous output has a textual but incomplete route. It must first be a fixed work in an enumerated category, not merely an idea, system or result. If no human formed the expression, it matches the s. 2 definition of computer-generated work and s. 11(6) contemplates copyright, but the Act supplies no general arranger-author rule and leaves author/first-owner allocation unresolved outside specific work-made-for-hire, maker or other fact patterns. Qualification is a separate gate. An unpublished work ordinarily depends on a qualified author, which is difficult to apply when the statutory category is expressly without human author. A published work may have a route through first publication in The Bahamas, a Universal Copyright Convention country or Berne protection. This tension prevents a blanket yes or no and requires output-specific territorial facts. Originality is not proved by novelty, randomness, aesthetic merit, prompt length or account ownership. The claimant should connect actual human decisions to perceptible expression or, for a fully autonomous claim, explain how the Act's original-work language is satisfied despite the no-human-author definition. No Bahamian authority supplies a GenAI originality threshold. Assisted works require decomposition. Human-written text or code, original drawing, edits, selection, coordination, arrangement and transformation can be claimed only to the extent identifiable and original; s. 7(4) prevents the human contribution or compilation from swallowing pre-existing or generated material. Prompting and curation may be evidence, but neither is per se authorship of every output. Software must be separated into the computer program as a literary work, generated code, human-authored code and any compilation/derivative architecture. The program category does not create an exception to authorship, fixation, originality, qualification or ownership rules. Film, sound and performance layers cannot be used as a shortcut. The person arranging a motion picture or first fixation of sounds may be the statutory maker, a sound recording protects actual sounds fixed, and performers/recording-right holders have independent rights. Those rights do not prove copyright in underlying autonomous lyrics, music, script or images; PRS confirms simultaneous separate layers. Registration has an evidentiary effect but is not constitutive. A sealed certificate with an early filing can be prima facie evidence, yet it does not show that AI was disclosed because the form has no AI field. A valid grant claim therefore requires the certificate, deposit/application, correspondence, exact work, title, claimant, author entries, contribution disclosures, examination history and chain of title. Negative evidence is bounded. Online searches found no individual GenAI grant or denial, but s. 99 provides an official paid search and public inspection route. The next gate is an output/title/applicant-specific request or certified search report, not an unsupported zero. Evidence quality is high for statutory text and commencement, high for the two reported appellate holdings, medium for registry availability and zero-result coverage because public online catalogues are incomplete, and low for any prediction about a modern GenAI output without a national decision or administrative file. Defenses include lack of eligible category, fixation, originality, qualified connection, author or owner; false attribution; unproved work-made-for-hire facts; insufficiently separable human contribution; copying/unlawful pre-existing material; mismatch between certificate and litigated version; and confusion of an underlying work with a recording, film, broadcast or performance right. Atomic exclusions: this issue does not decide training-data infringement, fair dealing, privacy/personality/deepfake law, passing off, trade marks, patents, industrial designs, contractual platform rights, collective-management repertories, ISBN, legal deposit or provenance services. None is an individualized copyright grant for the output.
Limitaciones documentadas
No published Bahamian judicial or administrative merits decision applies the 2024 computer-generated-work provisions to modern generative AI. No enacted general rule was located identifying who is author or first owner of a computer-generated work outside work-made-for-hire, maker or other specific facts; the interaction of ss. 2, 6–8, 11 and 20 is unsettled. No national authority was located defining originality, sufficient human control, prompting, iteration, curation, inpainting, editing or selection thresholds for GenAI outputs. No public online catalogue of individual copyright registrations was located; s. 99 on-site/paid search and non-digitized or legacy records were not exhausted by web research. No individual GenAI registration application, deposit, certificate, written refusal, reasoned examination, judicial challenge or appeal was located; AI may also be undisclosed in generic forms. Darling v Attorney General remained pending on its merits at the cutoff; the complete body of the reported 16 February 2022 summary-judgment refusal was not located. The underlying judgment and decision date in Performing Right Society Ltd v Barbary Beach Development Ltd t/a Viva Wyndham Fortuna Beach Resort, 2014/CLE/gen/FP/00219, were not located; only its procedural result is reported in another national primary judgment. The two verified appellate criteria interpret the former Copyright Act and are used only for continuing layer/separability principles; neither is an AI holding under the 2024 Act. The current institutional contact and migration from the Registrar General's Office to the standalone Intellectual Property Office are not fully exposed in a public copyright-service portal. WCT, WPPT and Rome had been acceded to but were not yet in force at the cutoff; their post-cutoff effect must be rechecked for later advice. Training, input infringement, fair dealing, privacy, personality/deepfakes, trade marks, patents, industrial designs, competition, contract and collective-management issues require separate analysis.