diff --git a/src/pheval/prepare/prepare_corpus.py b/src/pheval/prepare/prepare_corpus.py
index df0beda2..15cd1810 100644
--- a/src/pheval/prepare/prepare_corpus.py
+++ b/src/pheval/prepare/prepare_corpus.py
@@ -92,4 +92,4 @@ def prepare_corpus(
             # if not updating phenopacket gene identifiers then copy phenopacket as is to output directory
             shutil.copy(
                 phenopacket_path, output_dir.joinpath(f"phenopackets/{phenopacket_path.name}")
-            )
+            ) if phenopacket_path != output_dir.joinpath(f"phenopackets/{phenopacket_path.name}") else None