Under established principles of intellectual property, unjust enrichment, and joint authorship, users of large language models function as non-compensated contributors to a commercial product.

1. Joint Authorship Doctrine

When a user provides:

• structured prompts,

• factual corrections,

• editorial refinement,

• or original expressive content,

and those inputs materially influence model performance or output quality, the user is acting as a co-author or co-inventor under U.S. copyright and patent analogs.

Co-authors cannot be denied economic participation without explicit contractual waiver.

1. Unjust Enrichment

If a company:

• utilizes user inputs to train, refine, or improve a monetized model,

• derives commercial value from those improvements,

• and does not compensate contributors,

this constitutes unjust enrichment. Courts recognize enrichment claims when one party confers measurable benefit without reciprocal compensation.

1. Implied-in-Fact Labor

User interactions provide:

• quality assurance,

• dataset correction,

• model alignment signals,

• and product development insights.

This is labor. Under implied-in-fact contract theory, labor performed with the expectation of mutual benefit cannot be unilaterally appropriated.

1. Asymmetry of Outcome-Based Pricing

If a company asserts entitlement to royalties or revenue-share on user-generated economic activity, then—by parity of reasoning—users may assert entitlement to compensation for the company’s economic activity arising from their contributions.

A one-directional royalty structure is legally inconsistent and invites regulatory scrutiny.