Wuhan court weighs AI token costs in copyright damages ruling

A Wuhan Intermediate People's Court judge is reportedly evaluating AI token generation costs as a metric for calculating damages in a copyright infringement case involving AI-generated work, according to a National Law Review report published September 28, 2026. The court's consideration marks a potential departure from traditional human-labor-based valuation methods in Chinese intellectual property litigation. Legal analysts suggest this methodology attempts to quantify the economic value of machine-generated outputs by referencing actual computational expenses rather than hypothetical licensing fees. The case involves disputed AI-generated content where plaintiffs allege unauthorized use of protected works during model training or output generation. If adopted, this framework could provide courts with an objective, verifiable standard for assessing harm in generative AI disputes. The ruling remains pending, and no final judgment has been issued regarding the admissibility of token-cost evidence. International legal observers are monitoring the proceedings for signals on how Chinese judiciary systems will handle emerging AI intellectual property conflicts.