Published On: 3rd June 2026
Authored By: Mankirat Singh
Incoming Law Student at
Symbiosis Law School
Abstract
India’s intellectual property framework was designed for a world in which only human beings could create and invent. The emergence of autonomous Artificial Intelligence systems has exposed a fundamental gap in both the Copyright Act 1957 and the Patents Act 1970. Drawing on the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Governance Guidelines of November 2025, this article examines the doctrinal deficiencies in Indian intellectual property law concerning machine-generated creation, surveys comparative approaches adopted by the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union, and proposes two specific legislative interventions to address the crisis.
I. Introduction
In November 2025, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology published India’s Artificial Intelligence Governance Guidelines.[1] These guidelines are significant because they demonstrate that India’s senior policymakers now recognise that the country’s intellectual property framework is ill-equipped to handle Artificial Intelligence-generated output. The document acknowledges that existing legal categories are premised on the concepts of authorship and inventorship, categories that become inoperative when machines produce work independently. The guidelines proposed a ministerial committee to examine the intellectual property consequences of Artificial Intelligence, which means the authorship question is now officially part of India’s policy conversation.
The guidelines came late; the legislative silence had already been a problem for years. The Copyright Act 1957[2] and the Patents Act 1970 are the two principal statutes that protect creative and inventive output in India. Both laws were enacted decades before anyone contemplated Artificial Intelligence. They recognise only humans (or recognised legal entities) as authors or inventors, and they provide no guidance for situations in which an Artificial Intelligence system is the operative creative or inventive force. As Artificial Intelligence becomes increasingly prevalent in publishing, drug discovery, software development, and the creative industries, this lacuna is causing serious problems for innovators, investors, and creators in India’s technology-driven economy.
This article uses the MeitY Governance Guidelines of November 2025 as a framework to examine the deficiencies of Indian intellectual property law in relation to machine-generated creation.
II. Legal Analysis
The most acute problem lies in copyright law. Under the Copyright Act 1957, the author of a work is the person who creates it.[3] In the specific case of computer-generated outputs, however, the Act provides that the author is the person who causes the work to be created.[4] This provision was drafted at a time when computers were regarded as tools under human direction, not as autonomous generators of content. It did not contemplate a system capable of producing a novel, a legal opinion, or an artwork in response to minimal input.
Consider the following example: a user employs an Artificial Intelligence interface to generate a legal memorandum. The question of authorship is immediately uncertain. Is the author the researchers who built the underlying model, the company that deployed it, the person who submitted the prompt, or the data providers whose works trained the system? Each of these parties could advance a plausible claim; none can conclusively establish it. Indian courts have not yet addressed this question directly, and the statute offers no analytical framework for resolving it.
Patent law presents an analogous difficulty. The Patents Act 1970 requires that only the true and first inventor may file a patent application.[5] An Artificial Intelligence system cannot qualify as an inventor, because it is not a human being and lacks the legal capacity to hold or transfer property rights. This means that where an Artificial Intelligence system autonomously identifies a drug molecule or an engineering configuration, there is presently no mechanism under Indian law to protect the resulting invention.
Other jurisdictions have already confronted this issue. In the United Kingdom, the Supreme Court held that an Artificial Intelligence system cannot be recognised as an inventor for the purposes of a patent application.[6] Analogous decisions have been reached in the United States, Germany, and Australia.[7] India has not yet adjudicated the issue, but the question is likely to arise before its courts in the near future.
Comparative analysis confirms that India is lagging in addressing Artificial Intelligence-generated creation. The United Kingdom has statutory provisions dealing with computer-generated authorship. The European Union has initiated legislative deliberations regarding the ownership of Artificial Intelligence-generated content.[8] The United States Copyright Office has published guidance on the matter.[9] India must bridge this gap.
The MeitY guidelines are significant in that they acknowledge the problem and propose a committee to develop solutions. Acknowledging a problem and constituting a committee does not resolve it, however; the underlying legal deficiencies require direct legislative intervention.
III. Supporting Authority
Indian courts have not addressed the question of Artificial Intelligence-generated creation directly. Nevertheless, certain decisions provide analogical support. The Delhi High Court has held that copyright cannot vest in an entity that lacks legal existence and the capacity to hold rights.[10] This reasoning applies with equal force to Artificial Intelligence systems, which are not legal persons and cannot possess or transfer rights. Any legal protection for Artificial Intelligence-generated outputs must therefore be attributed to a natural person or a recognised corporate entity.
The computer-generated works provision of the Copyright Act 1957 represents a potential point of departure for judicial or legislative development, though the extent to which it can be stretched to accommodate fully autonomous Artificial Intelligence output remains uncertain. The Patents Act 1970 assumes the existence of a human inventor behind every application, an assumption that does not hold for Artificial Intelligence-generated inventions. Further, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 raises ancillary questions regarding the lawful basis for processing copyrighted training material in the development of Artificial Intelligence systems.[11]
At the international level, the World Intellectual Property Organization has been examining the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and intellectual property since 2019, though no binding multilateral framework has yet emerged.[12] Within India, the number of Artificial Intelligence-related patent filings has increased markedly in recent years.[13] The existing legal framework is not equipped to govern them. The discrepancy between the scale of filing activity and the absence of governing rules is unsustainable.
IV. Conclusion
The MeitY Artificial Intelligence Governance Guidelines of November 2025 represent India’s formal acknowledgment that the problem of Artificial Intelligence-generated creation can no longer be deferred. The Copyright Act 1957 and the Patents Act 1970 are laws conceived for a world in which human creativity and inventiveness were the exclusive objects of intellectual property protection. With each new Artificial Intelligence model introduced into the Indian market, the gap between the statute book and technological reality widens.
Two legislative interventions are necessary to address this gap. First, Parliament should introduce a provision designating a specific party (most plausibly the deployer or the user) as the presumptive owner of Artificial Intelligence-generated works, coupled with a mandatory disclosure requirement for producers to identify Artificial Intelligence-generated content. Second, the inventorship provisions of the Patents Act 1970 must be revised to accommodate Artificial Intelligence-assisted invention, or alternatively, a new sui generis category must be created with its own rules of ownership and duration of protection. Both interventions should be preceded by consultation with affected industries.
The stakes are considerable. India’s creative sector is valued at approximately thirty billion dollars and accounts for eight per cent of national employment. India’s increasing volume of Artificial Intelligence-related patent filings reflects a significant and growing technological investment. Legislative inaction is not a neutral posture; it is an invitation to the courts to develop rules incrementally, case by case, without any coherent policy framework to guide them. That outcome would serve neither creators, nor inventors, nor users of Artificial Intelligence-generated content. The MeitY guidelines signal governmental readiness for reform. Whether that readiness translates into enacted law will determine whether India’s intellectual property framework keeps pace with its technological ambitions.
References
[1] Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, ‘Artificial Intelligence Governance Guidelines’ (November 2025).
[2] Copyright Act 1957 (India).
[3] Copyright Act 1957 (India) s 2(d).
[4] Copyright Act 1957 (India) s 17, Explanation (computer-generated works).
[5] Patents Act 1970 (India) s 6.
[6] Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] UKSC 49.
[7] Thaler v Vidal, 43 F 4th 1207 (Fed Cir 2022) (United States); Re: Applications for Patents by DABUS (Germany), BPatG, 11 November 2021; Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879 (Australia).
[8] European Parliament, ‘Report on Intellectual Property Rights for the Development of Artificial Intelligence Technologies’ (2020/2015(INI)).
[9] US Copyright Office, ‘Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 1: Digital Replicas’ (2023).
[10] Eastern Book Company v D B Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1, 28 (on authorship requiring a human author).
[11] Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (India) ss 4, 6.
[12] World Intellectual Property Organization, ‘Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO/IP/AI/2/GE/20/1 REV, 2020).
[13] Intellectual Property India, Annual Report 2023-24 (Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks 2024) ch 3 (noting a 45 per cent increase in AI-assisted patent filings over three years).
