It can be and is both what you describe and a necessary feature of our adversarial legal system. Github can't really go to a court by themselves and ask "is th

It can be and is both what you describe and a necessary feature of our adversarial legal system. Github can't really go to a court by themselves and ask "is this legal?". There is the concept declaratory relief but you need to be at least threatened with a lawsuit before that's on the table. So Github kinda just has to try releasing CoPilot and get sued to find out. The legal system is setup to reward the lawyer who will go to bat against them to find out if it is legal. The plantiff (and maybe lawyer, depending on how the case is financed) take the risk they are wrong just as Github had to. It is setup this way to incentivize lawyers to protect everyone's rights.