Author: Ayush Pandey, B.A.L.L.B(1st year Dr.Rajendra prasad National Law University ,Prayagraj,UttarPradesh
Introduction
IPR the term which can be defined as the legal rights that protect creations of mind and can be used to safeguard the ownership of the inventions, creations, ideas , brands and designs that are created by the inventors so that they can enjoy there ownership rights and due consideration could be given to them. Various types of IPR is there having different perspectives and realm for example the copyrights under the copyrights act, 1957 , trade marks which are governed under trademarks act 1999, patents and designs governed under different laws like Patents act 1970. There has been various effects and changes that have emerged in this field with the emergence of technology now these rights related to your ideas now even exist in this digital realm and we can now delve into the real of this digital age which can act as a double edged sword for this things.
The emergence of AI and non fungible tokens in this age has become a significant form of hurdle for Intellectual property rights and has has posed significant challenge to it. In the case of AI generated works or some documents, writings we are unable to infer who is the real owner wether the ownership rights to be conferred to the AI or to the person who has generated it by giving instructions to AI. In the case of emergence of blockchain technology in the Non fungible tokens have also increased the confusion of ownership in the age of digital technology. There also have been the absence of clear regulations and guidelines governing ownership rights related to it and the absence of prominent case laws related to it. Som Prakash Rekhi v.s Union of India & Anr on, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India rendered a decision on what constitutes a “person” in the eyes of the law. Thus it conferred that AI is not a legal personality as it can neither be sued nor can sue so by this it constitutes more confusion in realising wether the person who is giving the instructions to AI for forming a work is real owner or not or wether it is just a copied work.
The impact of AI on IPR
The emergence of digital technology in this new world has came up with various new types of topics and softwares, in this era of 21st century the AI is a reality, but before understanding how it has impacted the IP, copyright and patent laws we have to delve into a deeper understanding what is AI and how does it work . The AI can be defined as simulation of human intelligence by machine in performing various tasks and to use the intelligence like humans in doing some creative or innovative work. But this thing also depends on the feeding of data in the machine then setting an algorithim for it’s usage and then the self correction technique under which the AI evolves by itself by learning from the experiences and making responses accurate.
As we have seen how the AI works so we can understand the basic fact that how it has been updating and transforming IP creation and management. When we delve into the basic case issues we come to know that it has been creating as well as managing the IP assets and improving the use and efficiency of Ip management, it can enchance the detection and prevention of IP theft and has also helped and made easy for new business to identify potential licences and to negotiate the licensing agreements. But the challenges it has brought too, for example various cases exist like China’s first on Gen AI output infringement involving an AI company producing images closely resembling to superhero Ultraman and court highlighted that proper training for AI and it’s training for not using copyrighted materials and we can also in November,2024 the delhi high court issued summons to Open AI in response to a copyright plea filed by ANI as it incorrectly credited some political news to agency and leading to false information and public unrest. Thus the use of AI has also been responsible in widespread violation of IPR laws and how it has been affecting the sanctity of works produced by different people as well as their ownership rights too.
The future emerging trends:
With the emergence of Ai and it’s attributes there have been many recent developments in security and authenticity related to IPR and the copyright and patent laws. Like in AI there has been emergence of a prospective version known as Generative AI which has been using the information from web and using it without the care of infringement of Intellectual property rights or infringing the copyright and patent laws. The recent case as initiated by Getty images and a group of artists against stability AI as it have copied there 12 million images without any compensation or consent thus leading to infringement of their work.
But, if we say that AI is a double edged sword it would not be incorrect as it is recognised in European union Intellectual property office report “Study on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Infringement and Enforcement of Copyright and Designs” because at one time it could be used to remove watermarks and dots which are used to track copyrighted works and at once it could be used as AI bots to recognize deepfake works or to recognize work works which have been copyrighted.
The digital millennium copyright act provides a framework for copyright in this age but it also not addresses the issue of naming and the use of new works made on existing works. Various laws whether we consider the patent laws, copyright laws and the laws related to India we can consider this as a reality that AI has not been realized as a legal personality till now, thus though it can be used as a net for safeguarding the patent laws but has been misused largely leading to complexity, confusion and infringement of people’s rights. If consider the case laws there comes a major case related to it Alice Corp vs CLS Bank International which address the issue of addressing the patents on software inventions and recognized that they do not cover the definition of “ invention” in international law as well as according to section 2(1)(j) of Indian patent act, thus making it difficult for the software inventions and covering AI too to be recognized as original work. So by this fact an open discussion is left that though the recent developments have made the image of originality blur, but we have to still consider that whether to use the AI in protecting patent laws or for infringing upon them.
Conclusion
Thus from the recent developments in the world about the technology and and the
emergence of AI we can infer that that there has been a wind of it’s impact on the IPR and it’s usage all around the world . It has been a recent issue and also the emergence of this kind of misuse as well as safeguarding the copyright, ownership of some brands and their use by the same technology which is called artificial intelligence where it can be used to create AI bots to recognize fake brands and to safeguard the patented rights of other users who must have copyright, trademark and patents and at the same time it is has used data and works of other other users for making it’s own creations by stimulating it’s machine intelligence and the court too has not given it the right of legal personalities thus it cannot be conferred ownership rights too. There id the open ended discussion that how the legal developments in this respect takes place and how the usage of AI takes turn and impactes the patent laws in world and Indian respect too.
