Good to know - thanks. I was aware of the human-authorship requirement — see, e.g., the "monkey selfie" controversy [0] — but I hadn't known that the Copyright Office took that position about medical imaging.
I can imagine that a court might see things differently, given that under Supreme Court precedent [1] it takes comparatively-little human creative effort to constitute an "original work of authorship" as required by the Copyright Act. But it's also likely that no one has ever cared enough about claiming copyright in a medical image to go challenging the Office's position — or that I''m simply not up to date on this area of the law (which isn't part of my day-to-day practice).
Oh yeah, in a courtroom, laws are bent, misinterpreted, and ignored all the time. But it's at least declared clearly to the extent that it would have to be ignored in order for a copyright claim to hold up. Courtrooms and lawyers are a unique thing.
I was originally thinking it would fall under the monkey taking a selfie as the technician (not photographer) is merely activating a machine that actually makes an image (and not photo, it's actually a radiograph), like a programmer executing code that has an AI generate an image. Particularly in the case of the auto-panning machines. But everything in this paragraph can be wildly misinterpreted by the eyes and lies of a lawyer, since the user of a camera isn't taking a photo, they're pressing a button and the camera generates an image.
So you're absolutely correct on the "in a courtroom" setting.
Radiology technicians do more than just press a button: Every time I've had an X-ray or other imaging, the tech has positioned me; told me to move my arms and/or legs and/or torso and/or head; had me turn just a bit this way or that; etc. I could easily see how a court would conclude that this involved sufficient creativity that the image would constitute an "original work of authorship."
Speaking as a (former) litigator, I think you have a misimpression about what lawyers and judges do in our common-law judicial system. In part, we deal with edge- and corner cases that simply aren't clearly addressed in the statute. (If you're a software developer, you're surely familiar with the phenomenon.)
It could be argued that in a civil case, if a statute doesn't clearly allow the plaintiff to recover, then the court should simply deny the requested relief. But that's not how the Anglo-American system works. Anciently, to help keep the peace, common-law judges tried to figure out, "what would the King do if he were here?" Likewise, in our modern system, they ask, "what was the intent of [Parliament | Congress | the state legislature] in an edge- or corner case like this?" and to grant or deny relief accordingly. Is that a perfect system? No. But it has worked reasonably well for centuries, and so there'd be a huge path-dependence problem in trying to change it.
I can imagine that a court might see things differently, given that under Supreme Court precedent [1] it takes comparatively-little human creative effort to constitute an "original work of authorship" as required by the Copyright Act. But it's also likely that no one has ever cared enough about claiming copyright in a medical image to go challenging the Office's position — or that I''m simply not up to date on this area of the law (which isn't part of my day-to-day practice).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....