What question did this study set out to answer?

The research aims to establish a framework for assessing when modified digital artifacts warrant new authorship claims.

February 20, 2026Open Access

Generational Threshold Theory for Mutable Digital Artifacts: When Does an Evolving Artifact Warrant a New Claim of Authorship or Inventorship?

Key Points

The research aims to establish a framework for assessing when modified digital artifacts warrant new authorship claims.
Introduced Generational Threshold Theory (GTT) as a conceptual framework.
Connected GTT to the Modifiable Digital Device Entity (MDDE) framework by Fleshner.
Examined the implications within information systems design theory, copyright law, and patent law.
Defined generational delta as the measure of difference between digital artifact versions.
Argued that GTT provides criteria for resolving disputes over authorship in mutable artifacts.
Highlighted the necessity for intellectual property laws to adapt to evolving digital contexts.

Abstract

Digital artifacts are not static objects. They are modified, versioned, aggregated, and redistributed across devices and contexts, producing successive generations of related but distinct entities. Yet the intellectual property frameworks governing authorship and inventorship were designed for fixed works and point-in-time inventions, not for artifacts that evolve continuously. This paper introduces Generational Threshold Theory (GTT), a conceptual framework for determining when an evolved version of a digital artifact accumulates sufficient difference from its predecessor to warrant an independent claim of authorship or inventorship. We ground GTT in the Modifiable Digital Device Entity (MDDE) framework developed by Fleshner, which provides a governed architecture for mutable digital artifacts, and situate it within three adjacent bodies of literature: information systems (IS) design theory (artifact mutability), copyright law (originality and derivative works), and patent law (non-obviousness and improvement patents). We argue that the measurement of generational delta—the cumulative difference between artifact versions—provides a principled, tractable basis for resolving attribution disputes in systems where digital artifacts evolve without a singular moment of creation.

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