There were well known examples of copilot reproducing exact code snippets well before this lawsuit (e.g. the Quake's fast inverse square root function). Microsoft dealt with them by simply adding the offending function names to a blocklist.
In other words, if your open source project doesn't have such immediately recognizable code and didn't cause a shitstorm on Twitter, chances are copilot is still happily spewing out your exact code, sans the copyright and license info.
How many ways are there to write many of the basic algorithms we all use though? Can I copyright "({ item }) => <li>{item.label}</li>"?
Because I sure have seen that exact code written, from scratch, in many many places.
I guess my question boils down to "What is the smallest copyrightable unit of code?". Because I'm certain suing a novelist for copyright infringement on a character that says "Hi, how are you?" would be considered absurd.
Apple Books slaps an attribution notice on the end if you copy 4 or more words from a book. The Verve got sued by The Rolling Stones for a 4 second sample on 'Bittersweet Symphony'. Post 'Blurred Lines' you can now be sued for copying "the feel" of a song.
Really what it comes down to is do you have enough resources to convince a judge or jury that X is a copy of Y? Doesn't really matter the size of X.
