section_path: Copyright/United States
section_name: United States
paragraph_text: United States
  
  As per chapter 300 of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, "the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author" including "Medical imaging produced by X-rays, ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging, or other diagnostic equipment." This position differs from the broad copyright protections afforded to photographs. While the Copyright Compendium is an agency statutory interpretation and not legally binding, courts are likely to give deference to it if they find it reasonable. Yet, there is no U.S. federal case law directly addressing the issue of the copyrightability of X-ray images.