Aljindi v. United States — Federal Circuit Confirms §1498(b) Is Exclusive Path for Copyright Claims Against the Government

Background

Dr. Ahmad Aljindi, a pro se litigant, has filed multiple suits claiming that the U.S. government appropriated intellectual property from his 2015 doctoral dissertation on artificial intelligence. He alleges that federal agencies used methodologies described in his dissertation — which he says he holds as a copyright — across 23 major AI initiatives without compensation. Prior Federal Circuit opinions have described his litigation history and consistently ruled against him.

The present appeal arose from a 2025 suit Dr. Aljindi filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Rather than invoke §1498(b) — the statute that provides a right of action against the government specifically for copyright infringement — Dr. Aljindi expressly framed his complaint as a Fifth Amendment “takings” claim seeking Tucker Act jurisdiction, requesting approximately $1.8 billion in damages. The Court of Federal Claims dismissed the suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, finding that Tucker Act jurisdiction does not extend to takings claims that are really copyright infringement claims. Dr. Aljindi appealed.

The Court’s Holding

The Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal. The court confirmed two holdings: first, that the Court of Federal Claims correctly read Dr. Aljindi’s complaint as asserting only Tucker Act jurisdiction — because the complaint “unequivocally” stated it was “grounded solely in the Tucker Act and Fifth Amendment takings” — despite a single passing reference to §1498(b). Second, the court held that the Claims Court lacks Tucker Act jurisdiction over takings claims based on alleged copyright infringement by the government, because §1498(b) provides the exclusive remedy for such claims.

The decision follows the court’s prior holding in Golden v. United States, 955 F.3d 981 (Fed. Cir. 2020), which reached the same conclusion for patent infringement claims under §1498(a): the exclusive-remedy provision forecloses a parallel Tucker Act path. The court extended that logic to the copyright context under §1498(b).

Key Takeaways

• Copyright owners whose works have been used by the federal government cannot circumvent §1498(b) by recasting the claim as a Fifth Amendment “taking” — §1498(b) is the exclusive statutory remedy.
• This mirrors the rule for patent infringement under §1498(a), established in Golden v. United States (2020) — both flavors of IP infringement by the government now have the same exclusive-channel rule.
• A pro se plaintiff’s complaint will be read with less stringent pleading standards, but those standards do not relieve the plaintiff of the burden to establish subject-matter jurisdiction.
• The case involves AI-themed facts (alleged government use of a copyright on AI research) but does not address the substantive merits of whether the government actually used Dr. Aljindi’s work — only the procedural channel for pursuing such a claim.

Why It Matters

As AI research and methodology becomes increasingly valuable, questions about government use of proprietary AI systems and datasets may become more common. This ruling — while nonprecedential and arising from an unsuccessful pro se complaint — signals the Federal Circuit’s view that the §1498 framework applies to AI-related copyright claims against the government just as it does to conventional copyright infringement. Any party genuinely believing the government has infringed their copyright must proceed via §1498(b) in the Court of Federal Claims, with all the limitations that entails, rather than through the broader Tucker Act or constitutional takings framework.