A Chinese court put AI token costs into a copyright damages award
A court in Wuhan ruled in September 2026 that an AI-generated one-hour short drama, published on WeChat, is a protectable audiovisual work, because staff made their own creative decisions from the script through prompt design, selection of outputs and final edit. Another company had copied it, retitled it and added adverts within days. It is the first ruling to count token usage and AI tool licensing fees in the damages, alongside runtime, reach and duration; the plaintiff received 20,000 RMB, about $2,900. The court advised creators to keep scripts, prompt drafts and project files.
What it actually means
The award is small, but the reasoning is what a lawyer will reuse. Copyright turned on the human choices in the process and the paper trail that proves them, which makes your prompts, drafts and selection notes evidence rather than clutter. If you make client work with AI, decide now what you keep from each job and where it lives, because you won't be able to reconstruct it after someone copies the result.
It also puts a price on the tokens, so a claimant can argue that the copy cost you real money to produce. This is one Chinese court, so don't read it as a global rule; read it as a cheap habit worth starting before you need it.
The paper trail is the copyright.
20,000 RMBdamages awarded, the first to count token costs
Source: The Decoder · Tuesday 29 September 2026