IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—Fed. Cir.: A scientist’s multi-billion dollar claim to have 'discovered' artificial intelligence meets a predictable end, (Jun 9, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

After losing once on the merits, the scientist’s efforts to renew the lawsuit get nowhere.

A scientist who claims “discovery” of the entire artificial intelligence field—and therefore, in his view, holds “ownership of all subsequent work on the subject”—will not get another chance to test his theory before the judiciary, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. The court, noting that the scientist’s claim had already been dismissed on its face under a federal statute providing for intellectual property claims against the government, refused to open the door for the scientist to dress up the same claim under the theory of a constitutional taking (Aljindi v. U.S., No. 26-1180 (Fed. Cir. Jun. 8, 2026)).

The opinion is the latest of many, at both the trial and appellate levels, to hear and reject the implausible contentions. Dr. Ahmad Aljindi, a California resident, claims that the government used without permission a 2015 paper he wrote about artificial intelligence. He brought a $32 million lawsuit against the government in the Court of Federal Claims in 2021 alleging “theft of intellectual property by the Department of Defense.” (The pro se complaint also made a number of references to alleged hiring discrimination, refusal to hear administrative claims, and “ongoing judicial corruption, abuse, and torture.”) The Claims Court, noting that several other federal courts in California had already heard and rejected his claims, declined to take the case on grounds that it could not review the decisions of those courts and in any event it did not have the jurisdiction to hear the tort and misconduct claims he asserted.

This was only the beginning of the litigation, however. The Claims Court construed the scientist’s claim to arise under the Tucker Act, a federal statute that allows certain claims against the federal government but expressly excludes cases “sounding in tort.” 28 U.S.C. § 1491(a). So read, the Federal Circuit found on appeal, most of the lawsuit was properly barred. But the copyright claim, the court of appeals found, could have been construed as arising under another federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1498(b), that expressly permits copyright claims against the federal government. For this reason, the court of appeals found, the case would have to be remanded for further proceedings on this point.

But the copyright claim then ran into a brick wall on remand. The scientist asserted, the Claims Court noted, that his intellectual property consisted of a doctoral dissertation in which he claims “discovery” of the entire artificial intelligence field himself. Because he believes that “prior to my scientific research this field did not exist,” the court noted, he claims the right “to all subsequent work on the subject.” But copyright protections do not “extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work,” the court observed. Even making allowances for the scientist as a pro se litigant, the court found, “the material that he alleges the government used was not copyrightable.” He had “adhadhad hhhtherefore failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,” the court concluded. On a subsequent appeal (the scientist’s second) to the Federal Circuit, the court of appeals affirmed.

But that did not come close to ending the saga. The scientist, undeterred, filed yet another complaint in the Claims Court, this one seeking $65 million in damages. Once again the scientist claimed to have discovered the entire artificial intelligence field “in its entirety.” However, this time he brought his claim not under any statute but rather as a Fifth Amendment Takings Clause claim under the Tucker Act. The Claims Court again dismissed the complaint, finding that the takings clause claim under these circumstances arose in tort and therefore could not be remedied under the Act (the court also found that it was time-barred, barred by the doctrine of res judicata, and implausible on its face). The Federal Circuit yet again affirmed, and when the scientistic attempted to resurrect the case with a motion to reopen making allegations of malfeasance against the court itself, the Claims Court declared him a vexatious litigant and struck him with an anti-filing injunction prohibiting him from making any more filings. (The Federal Circuit upheld that order too, reaching only the vexatious litigation aspect and not the merits).

Current proceedings and most recent court of appeals decision. The scientist, still undeterred, continued to litigate his claim by filing yet another complaint in the Claims Court—this time seeking a whopping $1.8 billion in damages. The Claims Court, once again, had little trouble dismissing the complaint, and the Federal Circuit—on now its fifth encounter with the case—agreed. The court of appeals construed the central question as whether the Claims Court had Tucker Act jurisdiction over the scientist’s claims for uncompensated takings of his property in a copyright. The answer to this question was “no,” the court found, because §1498 was the sole means for pursuing relief for a copyright violation. That statute, which covered patent claims in § 1498(a) and copyright claims in § 1498(b), the court noted, had already been found in prior litigation to be the exclusive route for a patent claim to reach the Claims Court. “If § 1498(a) displaces Tucker Act jurisdiction for takings claims based in patent infringement,” the court concluded, “the case is even stronger that § 1498(b) does the same for takings claims based in copyright infringement.”

The Case is No. 26-1180.

Judge: Per Curiam.

Attorneys: Ahmad Jamaleddin Aljindi, pro se. Suzanne Johnson U.S. Department of Justice, for the U.S.

Cases: Copyright FedCirNews