"Copyright Office Rules AI Systems Cannot Hold Authorship Under Indian Law"
Legal personhood
the status of being recognised by law as capable of holding rights and bearing duties — includes natural persons and juristic persons like companies, but not AI systems under current Indian law.
Moral agency
the capacity to make ethical choices and bear responsibility for their consequences — a quality copyright law implicitly requires of an author.
India's Copyright Office recently ruled on an application seeking copyright registration for an artwork generated entirely by an AI system called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience). The applicant, who developed the AI, insisted that DABUS itself should be named as the author of the work titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise. He declined an opportunity to amend the application and name himself as the author instead. The Copyright Office ultimately found the artwork original enough to qualify for protection, but rejected the claim that an AI system could be its legal author under the Copyright Act, 1957.
This ruling is among the first in India to directly address a question that is rapidly becoming central to technology law and governance: when a machine generates a creative work, who, if anyone, is its author? The case crystallises a deeper ethical tension. AI systems are now capable of producing outputs that meet the legal threshold for originality. Yet the legal and moral frameworks that govern authorship were built around human beings who can hold rights, bear responsibilities, and be held accountable.
The application of Artificial Intelligence as a dependable source of input for administrative rational decision-making is a debatable issue. Critically examine the statement from the ethical point of view.
With the present state of development, Artificial Intelligence can effectively do which of the following?
1.Bring down electricity consumption in industrial units
2.Create meaningful short stories and songs
3.Disease diagnosis
4.Text-to-Speech Conversion
5.Wireless transmission of electrical energy
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
With reference to the Copyright Act, 1957, consider the following statements:
1.Section 2(d)(vi) defines the author of a computer-generated work as 'the person who causes the work to be created.'
2.Section 13 requires that a work must be novel and groundbreaking to qualify for copyright protection.
3.Section 17 provides that the author is generally the first owner of the copyright.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Consider the following statements regarding AI-generated works and copyright under Indian law:
1.An AI system can be recognised as the legal author of a work if it generates the output autonomously without human intervention.
2.The Copyright Office has held that the person who designs and operates an AI system may be treated as the person who 'causes' the work to be created.
3.Under Indian law, only natural persons and juristic persons with legal personality can hold copyright as authors.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Consider the following pairs:
Legal Provision — Subject Matter
1.Section 2(d)(vi), Copyright Act — Authorship of computer-generated works
2.Section 13, Copyright Act — Assignment and transfer of copyright
3.Section 17, Copyright Act — First ownership of copyright
How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?
The Supreme Court of India, in Eastern Book Company v D.B. Modak, laid down the standard for originality in copyright law. Which of the following best describes that standard?
The 'mastermind doctrine', applied by India's Copyright Office in a recent AI authorship ruling, holds that:
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