Scripted Knowledge: Are Anthropic's AI Skills Protected by Copyright?
A close reading of EU copyright law and what it means for a new class of digital artefact
In October 2025, Anthropic announced Skills, a new digital artefact that is utilized for prompting tasks that require formalized, procedural instructions. Anthropic defines Skills as “organized folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that agents can discover and load dynamically to perform better at specific tasks” (Anthropic, 2025). Skills cover many domains such as law. Legal Skills are utilized for many legal tasks such as regulatory compliance, legal drafting, research & analysis and so on. These Legal Skills could also be developed and shared openly through online platforms such as Lawve AI.
Originality Test for Skills
Intellectual property status of Skills is unclear. At the first glance, copyright law seems to be relevant as Skills are mostly text-based instructions that include specific formatting and formats such as YAML frontmatter. Skills could also include code scripts which are written in source code that is accepted as a copyrightable work under the Directive 2009/24/EC the Software Directive. Both text and source code, however, need to reach the originality threshold for them to be protected by copyright law.
European Union harmonized the originality threshold in multiple steps. Art. 1(3) of the Computer Programs Directive defined originality as the “personal intellectual creation of the author”. Subsequent case law such as Infopaq (C-5/08, 2009), Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace (C-393/09), Painer (C-145/10), Football Dataco (C-604/10), and Cofemel (C-683/17) further explained the originality requirement in detail. Originality requirement requires Author to have free and creative choices and work to be something more than mere technical instruction.
Source code found within Skills are mostly generic, short pieces of functional script that would not include the personal intellectual creation of the developer. This would make them ineligible for copyright protection under the Computer Programs Directive. Even so, they are only the optional part of Skills that are relatively less of an importance compared to the primary part of the Skills, the actual text of the Skills itself. The nature of the text within a Skills is highly formal and instructive. This would negatively impact the possibility of copyrighting Skills, as explained at the Football Dataco Case C-604/10, originality criterion is not satisfied if the work is “dictated by technical considerations, rules or constraints leaving no room for creative freedom”. Saving grace for the originality of Skills here would be the expression of the writers’ specific expertise and legal judgement in a personalized, unique manner: the more personal expertise expressed in a Skill that differentiates it from generic, standardized legal instructions, better the chances for copyright protection for such Skill. It would also help if the authors style of instruction and writing is also unique and differentiated from general Skills template as much as possible.
Open-Source Licensing of Skills
Another relevant and important issue for legal Skills, specifically publicly available legal Skills found in platforms such as Lawve AI would be the licenses that govern the share and use of Skills. Unfortunately, the most urgent and glaring issue for licensing Skills is that none of the open-source licenses would be applicable and valid for the Skills, even if they have been widely used by many authors. Open-source licenses such as permissive and copyleft licenses (MIT, AGPL-3.0 etc.) are specifically designed for governing source code and object code. Creative Commons licenses are legally appropriate and sufficient for Skills and they have been created precisely for this reason. As mentioned above, source code found within the scripts would most likely not pass the originality criterion. If the text of Skills does pass the originality criterion, it would be legally valid to license it under a Creative Commons license rather than an open-source license.
Conclusion
Skills are one of the many digital artefacts that appeared with the advent of generative AI models. They are at the frontier of intellectual property, pushing the boundaries of traditional classifications and existing licensing frameworks. This requires, just as with many other domains, a creative and innovative approach to understand and utilize them. And they will definitely not be the last piece of digital artefact that will challenge the existing legal structures.
Bibliography
Anthropic (2025). Introducing Skills. Anthropic. https://www.anthropic.com/news/skills
Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs (codified version) [2009] OJ L111/16 (Software Directive).
Case C-5/08, Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening [2009] ECR I-6569.
Case C-393/09, Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace – Svaz softwarové ochrany v Ministerstvo kultury [2010] ECR I-13971.
Case C-145/10, Eva-Maria Painer v Standard VerlagsGmbH and Others [2011] ECR I-12533.
Case C-604/10, Football Dataco Ltd and Others v Yahoo! UK Ltd and Others [2012] ECLI:EU:C:2012:115.
Case C-683/17, Cofemel – Sociedade de Vestuário SA v G-Star Raw CV [2019] ECLI:EU:C:2019:721.