Current IPR laws protect Gen AI works: Experts

Hyderabad: The current Patent and Copyright law provides exclusive rights including copyrights to the right owner. These rights allow the legal owner to license their work and innovations for a royalty, says experts.

On a query posed in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State Som Prakash informed the house that the existing patent and copyrights laws is well equipped to protect Artificial Intelligence works and related innovations.

Commenting on the same, Subhajit Saha, Head - Legal and IPR, Resolute Group said that IPR rights are a Right in Personam, and the current patent and copyright owners can initiate necessary civil and criminal remedies against the violators and infringers of their Intellectual Property Rights under the Act. Hence, the Government has decided not to have any separate legal framework for AI-driven works and Innovations.

“Currently, India is well compliant with all the major International Treaties, and has it all in its Act to protect and safeguard the rights of authors and creators. At this moment patents and copyrights are only granted to legal persons and not to any machine-driven works,” he said.

Saha further informed that all Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven work and content are prompt commands and generative works coming from the original author. The machine takes it over in large language models to create a new set of content. Technology will always remain ahead of law. We need to wait and see how this evolves over time, and further what regulations come in other jurisdictions, he added.

AI generative work owners are obligated to take permission from the original author to use the content, on the lines of Copyrights Act wherein the owners have the exclusive economic rights such as the right of reproduction, translation, and adaptation granted by the Copyrights Act 1957.