AI-Generated Fashion Designs: Who Owns the Runway

Abstract

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into the contemporary fashion industry has engendered profound legal uncertainty at the intersection of intellectual property law and emerging technology. This article addresses a central and pressing question: when an AI system independently produces a fashion design, who — if anyone — holds authorship and ownership over that output? Drawing on the Copyright Act, 1957,[1] the Designs Act, 2000,[2] and the Patents Act, 1970,[3] this article interrogates the capacity of India’s existing legal regime to accommodate AI-generated creative works. Through a doctrinal methodology and a structured comparative analysis of legislative frameworks in the European Union, United States, and United Kingdom, this study identifies a foundational definitional deficit: Indian intellectual property law is premised upon a human author, such that AI-generated fashion outputs risk existing entirely outside the scope of protectable subject matter. The article culminates in a call for targeted legislative intervention, proposing the creation of a sui generis rights category calibrated specifically for AI-assisted creative production.

I. Introduction

Fashion — long regarded as among the most intimate expressions of human ingenuity — is presently undergoing a technological transformation of considerable breadth. Generative AI platforms, encompassing tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E, Stability AI, and fashion-specific applications including CLO 3D and Heuritech, now possess the capacity to generate elaborate garment designs, textile patterns, silhouette variations, and complete seasonal collections within a matter of minutes. Global luxury houses — among them Valentino, Balenciaga, and Maison Margiela — have each incorporated AI-generated visual elements into their creative workflows, while Indian design practitioners, including studios associated with Manish Malhotra, have begun experimenting with AI in pattern generation and trend-forecasting applications.[4]

The legal question that this innovation raises is both urgent and, as yet, unresolved: when a fashion design is produced by an AI system — whether in a fully autonomous mode or through a sequence of user-directed prompts — does the resulting output qualify for intellectual property protection under Indian law? And if such protection is available, who is the proper rights-holder: the AI developer, the fashion enterprise that deployed the system, the individual who furnished the prompts, or none of these parties?[5]

These are not merely theoretical inquiries. Fashion constitutes one of the world’s most economically significant manufacturing sectors; India’s textiles and apparel market was estimated at approximately USD 165 billion in 2024.[6] The commercial stakes attached to design protection are therefore substantial. An unresolved authorship question over AI-generated designs produces two countervailing vulnerabilities: on one hand, such designs may fall into a public domain vacuum, freely reproducible by any competitor; on the other, they may be monopolised by AI developers in ways that suppress creative competition.[7]

This article proceeds through five analytical stages. First, it establishes the conceptual and doctrinal framework governing design protection in India. Second, it undertakes a detailed statutory analysis of how existing legislation applies — or proves inadequate — to AI-generated fashion works. Third, it engages with key judicial decisions that illuminate broader authorship questions. Fourth, it situates India’s legal position comparatively against global jurisdictions. Finally, it offers reform recommendations calibrated to India’s specific legal, industrial, and geopolitical context.

II. Background and Conceptual Framework

A. The Relevant Legislative Architecture in India

India’s intellectual property regime provides three principal mechanisms for the protection of fashion designs, each distinguished by its own eligibility criteria and limitations.[8]

The Designs Act, 2000 is the foremost instrument for protecting the aesthetic and ornamental characteristics of a commercial article. Section 2(d) defines a ‘design’ as those features of shape, configuration, pattern, or ornamentation which, when applied to an article by any industrial process, are judged solely by the eye.[9] Eligibility for protection under the Act requires satisfaction of four conditions: (i) novelty — meaning that the design must not have been previously published or used in India; (ii) originality; (iii) visual, non-functional appeal; and (iv) mandatory registration. Crucially, the Act neither defines the term ‘author’ in a substantively meaningful manner, nor does it contemplate the possibility of non-human creation as a source of protectable design.

The Copyright Act, 1957 affords protection to original artistic works under Section 2(c), a category that encompasses paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, and works of artistic craftsmanship. Section 13 vests copyright in the author, defined in Section 2(d) as the person who creates the work.[10] Section 2(d)(vi) introduces a narrow computer-generated works exception: the author is treated as the person who ‘causes the work to be made.’ This provision, inserted by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 1994, was designed for an era of deterministic software outputs — not for AI systems capable of autonomous, generative creation.[11]

The Patents Act, 1970, while not ordinarily engaged by fashion design, becomes relevant where AI is deployed to develop novel textile manufacturing techniques or innovative material compositions. Section 3(k) expressly excludes mathematical methods, algorithms, and computer programs per se from patentability,[12] thereby complicating the patentability of AI-driven design processes.

B. Prior Scholarship and Judicial Commentary

Indian courts have not yet directly confronted the question of AI authorship in the creative arts. In academic scholarship, Basheer and Kochupillai identified at an early stage the structural insufficiencies of India’s IP framework in addressing computer-generated creativity.[13] At the international level, Ginsburg and Budiardjo have persuasively argued that the Romantic conception of authorship — premised on individual human inspiration and creative agency — is fundamentally incompatible with algorithmic generation.[14] The World Intellectual Property Organization has published a series of policy analyses between 2019 and 2023 examining how member states ought to approach AI-generated intellectual property, noting a persistent global consensus deficit on this question.[15] These scholarly contributions collectively illuminate the doctrinal vacuum that this article seeks to examine and, provisionally, to address.

III. Legal Analysis

A. The Authorship Threshold: A Human Requirement?

The most foundational obstacle to the protection of AI-generated fashion designs under Indian law is the authorship requirement.[16] The Copyright Act’s enumeration of ‘author’ in Section 2(d) consists of an exhaustive list of human-centred categories: the composer, the dramatist, the artist, the photographer. Even Section 2(d)(vi) — the computer-generated works provision — attributes authorship not to the computer or AI system itself, but to ‘the person who causes the work to be made.’ The phrase necessarily presupposes a sufficiently directive human agent who can be identified as the proximate cause of the creative output.

The pivotal question, accordingly, is whether a fashion designer who inputs a textual prompt into an AI system — for example, an instruction to ‘generate a Baroque-inspired evening gown in silk organza with asymmetric draping’ — exercises sufficient creative direction to qualify as the person who ‘causes the work to be made.’ This inquiry requires a distinction between two distinct modes of AI engagement. In the first, the AI functions as an advanced creative tool: the human designer makes iterative and substantive creative choices, selects among generated outputs, applies modifications, and incorporates the AI’s work within a larger artistic vision. In the second, the AI operates with substantial independence, generating designs based on its training data with only minimal human direction.[17]

The Copyright Act does not itself resolve this question. However, applying the principle of modicum of creativity — which the Supreme Court of India recognised in Eastern Book Company v D B Modak as requiring only a ‘minimal degree of creativity’ for copyright subsistence[18] — it is at least arguable that a sufficiently specific and creatively conceived prompt satisfies this threshold. The analytical difficulty lies in the gradations: at what point does human input become so attenuated that no identifiable human author can be said to remain?[19]

B. The Designs Act: Registration and the Novelty Problem

The Designs Act, 2000 presents a different, and in some respects more acute, set of difficulties. Unlike copyright, which subsists automatically on creation, design protection under the Act is contingent upon registration with the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks. Section 5 permits any person claiming to be the proprietor of a new or original design to apply for registration. The term ‘proprietor’ is defined in Section 2(j) to include the person for whom a design is made for valuable consideration — a formulation that presupposes a contractual mechanism for the transfer of rights.[20]

This definitional architecture presents two discrete difficulties in the context of AI-generated designs. First, an AI system lacks the legal personality necessary to qualify as a ‘proprietor.’ Second, in cases where a design emerges from autonomous AI generation without any identifiable commissioning arrangement, there is no obvious human party to whom proprietary rights can be attributed. The Act’s silence on this point creates an ownership vacuum that the existing framework is not equipped to fill.[21]

The novelty requirement compounds the difficulty. AI systems trained on large datasets of pre-existing designs may produce outputs that are technically novel in the sense of being previously unseen, yet compositionally derivative of their training corpora. Whether such AI-derived novelty satisfies the Designs Act’s originality standard remains unsettled, and the Act provides no analytical mechanism for assessing the provenance of an AI system’s ‘creative’ choices.

C. Ownership Allocation: Developer, Deployer, or Prompter?

Even assuming protectability in principle, the question of how ownership should be allocated among AI developers, fashion enterprises, and individual designers is acute. Three analytical models present themselves under extant Indian law.

Under the work-for-hire doctrine embodied in Section 17 of the Copyright Act, where a work is produced by an author in the course of employment, the employer shall — absent any contrary agreement — be the first owner of the copyright.[22] This would support attributing ownership to the fashion house that employs the designer who used the AI tool. However, this reasoning presupposes the existence of a human author-employee whose work product is being attributed — an increasingly fictive premise in circumstances where AI contributes substantially to the output.

Where an AI platform is licensed to a fashion enterprise by its developer, the licensing terms may purport to vest ownership in the developer. Major AI platforms including Adobe Firefly and Midjourney have inserted clauses in their terms of service asserting rights over AI-generated outputs. Indian contract law would give effect to such terms, subject to the constraints of unconscionability and public policy under the Indian Contract Act, 1872.[23]

A third possibility — that no qualifying human author exists and the design falls into the public domain — is arguably the most doctrinally defensible under current law, and simultaneously the most commercially untenable. It would result in AI-generated designs receiving no protection whatsoever, thereby eliminating any incentive for investment in AI-driven fashion innovation.[24]

D. The Trade Dress and Passing Off Dimension

Where statutory mechanisms fail, common law remedies may provide a partial substitute. Indian courts have recognised the tort of passing off as a vehicle for protecting unregistered trade dress, including design elements that have acquired secondary meaning in the marketplace.[25] In Cadbury India Ltd v Neeraj Food Products,[26] the Delhi High Court affirmed that passing off guards against misrepresentation likely to damage the goodwill of a trader. A fashion house that has consistently produced a distinctive AI-generated aesthetic — even without formal registration — may accumulate sufficient goodwill to support a passing off action against imitators. This remedy, however, is a conduct-based protection rather than a proprietary right, and therefore affords incomplete and structurally inferior protection.[27]

IV. Case Law Discussion

A. Eastern Book Company v D B Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1

The Supreme Court of India was required to determine whether headnotes, editorial annotations, and judgement arrangements produced by the publisher EBC in its legal compilation series attracted copyright protection. The defendants, who had reproduced these compilations, contended that the underlying judgements were public domain documents.

Applying a modicum of creativity standard — itself drawn from the United States Supreme Court’s analysis in Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service Co[28] — the Court held that industrious effort alone (the ‘sweat of the brow’ doctrine) was insufficient to generate copyright, but that a minimal degree of creative judgement would suffice. The editorial inputs — selection, arrangement, and expression — demonstrated sufficient originality to attract protection.[29]

For AI-generated fashion design, this decision is doctrinally significant: it confirms that Indian copyright law demands neither high artistic merit nor sustained creative effort — merely a threshold of creative judgement. Translated to the AI-fashion context, the operative question becomes whether the human prompter or AI-deployer exercises sufficient creative judgement in crafting prompts, evaluating outputs, and curating the final design. The case does not, however, resolve the situation of fully autonomous AI creation, where no human creative agency is identifiably present.[30]

B. Thaler v. Vidal, 43 F 4th 1207 (Fed Cir 2022) — United States

Dr Stephen Thaler filed patent applications with the USPTO designating his AI system ‘DABUS’ as the sole inventor of two technical inventions. The USPTO rejected the applications on the basis that an inventor must be a natural person. Thaler sought judicial review of this determination.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the USPTO’s rejection without equivocation, holding that the Patent Act requires ‘inventors’ to be natural persons. The court declined to extend inventorship to AI systems, finding that both the statutory text and legislative history clearly contemplated human inventors.[31] This litigation produced materially identical outcomes in the United Kingdom Supreme Court[32] and in European Patent Office opposition proceedings. For India, where Section 2(y) of the Patents Act defines ‘inventor’ without explicit qualification as to natural personhood, the Thaler line of authority strongly suggests that courts and the Indian Patent Office would import such a requirement by necessary implication. The trajectory of this jurisprudence thus redirects analysis back to human-directed creative activity as the necessary locus of IP protection.

C. The Sui Generis Model: The EU Database Directive Analogy

The European Union’s adoption of a sui generis database right under Directive 96/9/EC provides an instructive doctrinal precedent. Recognising that the creation of databases required substantial investment but did not consistently satisfy traditional authorship standards, the EU established a standalone right protecting database makers against the extraction and reutilisation of their contents for a period of fifteen years.[33] The Court of Justice of the EU in British Horseracing Board Ltd v. William Hill confirmed that this right protects investment in data collection and assembly, independent of any authorial creativity.[34]

The significance of this model for Indian AI-fashion law is considerable: it demonstrates that the legislative framework can resolve the disjunction between the authorship requirement and the protection of substantial investment. Fashion houses and AI developers invest materially in developing AI design systems — even where no traditional ‘author’ generates the output. A sui generis framework modelled on the EU database right, suitably adapted for AI-generated creative works, could protect such investment without distorting or displacing traditional copyright concepts.[35] India’s obligations under the Berne Convention do not preclude the creation of rights that fall outside the Convention’s scope.[36]

V. Critical Analysis and Findings

The foregoing analysis discloses three structural deficiencies in India’s intellectual property framework as applied to AI-generated fashion designs.

First, there is a definitional anachronism embedded in the foundational architecture of both the Copyright Act and the Designs Act. Both statutes were constructed around the Romantic ideal of the individual human creator as the generative source of protectable work. Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act — the computer-generated works provision — represented a forward-looking but insufficiently developed response to technological change, drafted for an era of deterministic software rather than the probabilistic, generative AI systems that now characterise the field.[37] The application of that provision to contemporary large language models and diffusion-based systems, which generate outputs through stochastic processes that cannot be traced to any singular human decision, strains the provision beyond the limits of its intended and workable scope.[38][39]

Second, the ownership allocation problem reflects a deeper policy uncertainty regarding who should bear the rewards of AI-driven creative innovation. The current framework, through a combination of contractual terms of service and the absence of a dedicated statutory regime, inadvertently advantages AI developers over the fashion designers and commercial enterprises that drive actual market application and bear the primary commercial risk. This misalignment of incentives discourages Indian fashion brands from investing in domestically developed AI design tools and encourages dependence on foreign platforms that claim ownership over their outputs.[40][41]

Third, the comparative picture confirms that India is not alone in confronting these difficulties, but is nonetheless falling behind its major trading partners in legislative response. The United Kingdom’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 already provides, under Section 9(3), that for computer-generated works the author is taken to be the person who ‘undertakes the necessary arrangements for making the work’[42] — a considerably more workable standard than India’s equivalent provision. The EU’s proposed AI Act, while constituted primarily as a safety and risk regulation, will foreseeably interact with intellectual property law in ways that India has not yet begun to contemplate.[43]

The consistent judicial trajectory across jurisdictions — from Thaler in the US and UK[44] to EPO opposition decisions — reflects a strong and principled institutional preference for human authorship. This conservative approach embodies legitimate systemic concerns: the extension of IP rights to AI outputs without qualification risks concentrating monopoly power in a small number of technology enterprises, with consequent suppression of creative competition. The challenge for policymakers is to calibrate any protection so as to incentivise investment without foreclosing access.[45]

VI. Conclusion

The question posed at the outset of this article — who owns the runway when an AI designs the collection — does not admit of a straightforward answer under India’s current intellectual property framework. The Copyright Act, 1957 and the Designs Act, 2000 were drafted without any contemplation of autonomous machine creativity, and their provisions cannot — however liberally interpreted — bridge the foundational gap left by the requirement of human authorship.

This article has established the following propositions: (i) AI-generated fashion designs presently occupy a doctrinal grey zone under Indian IP law; (ii) the computer-generated works provision of the Copyright Act is structurally inadequate for contemporary generative AI; (iii) courts across jurisdictions uniformly decline to attribute authorship or inventorship to AI systems; and (iv) a sui generis rights model offers the most coherent and proportionate path forward for legislative reform.

India’s Parliament ought to consider amending the Copyright Act to introduce a dedicated AI-generated works category, conferring time-limited, reduced-term protection — of perhaps fifteen years — upon the person who deploys the AI system for commercial creative purposes. Concurrently, the Designs Act should be amended to permit registration in cases where the design originates from a qualifying AI system, with ownership vesting in the commissioning or deploying entity. These reforms, calibrated to India’s position as both a major global textile producer and an emergent hub of AI innovation, would realign economic incentives with legal certainty — and equip India’s creative industries to compete with confidence on the global runway.[46]

VII. References and Bibliography

A. Primary Sources — Statutes

1. The Copyright Act 1957 (No 14 of 1957) (India), as amended by the Copyright (Amendment) Act 1994 and 2012.

2. The Designs Act 2000 (No 16 of 2000) (India).

3. The Patents Act 1970 (No 39 of 1970) (India), as amended.

4. The Indian Contract Act 1872 (No 9 of 1872) (India).

5. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c 48) (United Kingdom).

6. Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the Legal Protection of Databases [1996] OJ L77/20.

B. Primary Sources — Case Law

7. Eastern Book Company v D B Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India).

8. Cadbury India Ltd v Neeraj Food Products 2007 (34) PTC 95 (Del) (Delhi High Court).

9. Thaler v Vidal 43 F 4th 1207 (Fed Cir 2022) (United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit).

10. Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] UKSC 49 (United Kingdom Supreme Court).

11. British Horseracing Board Ltd v William Hill Organisation Ltd (Case C-203/02) [2004] ECR I-10415 (Court of Justice of the European Union).

12. Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service Co 499 US 340 (1991) (United States Supreme Court).

C. Secondary Sources — Books and Journal Articles

13. Shamnad Basheer and Mrinalini Kochupillai, ‘Assessing India’s Innovation Capacity: The Role of Intellectual Property Rights’ (2012) 17(1) Journal of Intellectual Property Rights 3.

14. Jane C Ginsburg and Luke Ali Budiardjo, ‘Authors and Machines’ (2019) 34 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 343.

15. Ryan Abbott, The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law (Cambridge University Press 2020).

16. P Narayanan, Intellectual Property Law (Eastern Law House, 4th edn 2017).

17. Andres Guadamuz, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Copyright? Comparative Analysis of Originality in Artificial Intelligence Generated Works’ (2017) 2 Intellectual Property Quarterly 169.

18. Russ Pearlman, ‘Recognizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Authors and Inventors Under U.S. Intellectual Property Law’ (2018) 24 Richmond Journal of Law & Technology 2.

19. Susan Scafidi, Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law (Rutgers University Press 2005).

20. Irene Calboli and Jane C Ginsburg (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (Cambridge University Press 2020).

21. Stacey L Dogan and Mark A Lemley, ‘The Merchandising Right: Fragile Theory or Fait Accompli?’ (2005) 54 Emory Law Journal 461.

22. Niva Elkin-Koren and Eliot Salzberger, The Law and Economics of Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The Limits of Analysis (Routledge 2013).

23. Tim Wu, ‘Tolerated Use’ (2008) 31 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 617.

24. Benjamin L W Sobel, ‘Artificial Intelligence’s Fair Use Crisis’ (2017) 41 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 45.

25. Madelaine de Cock Buning, ‘Autonomous Intelligent Systems as Creative Agents under the EU Framework for Intellectual Property’ (2016) 7(3) European Journal of Risk Regulation 310.

26. Lior Zemer, The Idea of Authorship in Copyright (Ashgate 2007).

27. Carys J Craig and Ian R Kerr, ‘The Death of the AI Author’ (2021) 10(2) Ottawa Law Review 31.

28. Enrico Bonadio and Luke McDonagh, ‘Artificial Intelligence as Producer and Consumer of Copyright Works: Evaluating the Consequences of Algorithmic Creativity’ (2020) 9(1) Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 112.

29. Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid and Luis Antonio Velez-Sanchez, ‘Copyrightability of Artworks Produced by Creative Robots and Originality: The Formality-Objective Model’ (2018) 19(1) Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology 1.

30. Arpan Banerjee, ‘Judicial Approaches to Moral Rights in India: An Analysis’ (2011) 13(1) Intellectual Property Quarterly 72.

31. Tabrez Ahmad and Satya Ranjan Swain, Intellectual Property Law and Technology: A Practitioner’s Guide (LexisNexis India 2015).

D. Institutional and Policy Sources

32. World Intellectual Property Organization, ‘WIPO Technology Trends 2019: Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO, Geneva, 2019).

33. WIPO, ‘Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO/IP/AI/2/GE/20/1 REV, 2020).

34. European Commission, ‘Proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act)’ COM(2021) 206 final.

35. Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, ‘National IPR Policy 2016’ (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, 2016).

36. UK Intellectual Property Office, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: Copyright and Patents’ (UKIPO Consultation Response, 2022).

E. Online Sources

37. Shraddha Pandey, ‘Protecting AI-Generated Works Under Indian Copyright Law: Challenges and the Way Forward’ (Mondaq, 2023) <https://www.mondaq.com/india/copyright/1308032> accessed 1 March 2025.

38. Nisha Rathi, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property in India: Current Landscape and Future Outlook’ (Bar and Bench, 2023) <https://www.barandbench.com/columns/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-india> accessed 1 March 2025.

[1]The Copyright Act 1957 (No 14 of 1957) (India), s 2(d)(vi), as amended by the Copyright (Amendment) Act 1994 and 2012.

[2]The Designs Act 2000 (No 16 of 2000) (India), s 2(d).

[3]The Patents Act 1970 (No 39 of 1970) (India), s 3(k).

[4]Susan Scafidi, Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law (Rutgers University Press 2005) 22–35; see also Shamnad Basheer and Mrinalini Kochupillai, ‘Assessing India’s Innovation Capacity: The Role of Intellectual Property Rights’ (2012) 17(1) Journal of Intellectual Property Rights 3, 8.

[5]Jane C Ginsburg and Luke Ali Budiardjo, ‘Authors and Machines’ (2019) 34 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 343, 351.

[6]Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, ‘National IPR Policy 2016’ (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, 2016) 3.

[7]Ryan Abbott, The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law (Cambridge University Press 2020) 88–92; Andres Guadamuz, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Copyright? Comparative Analysis of Originality in Artificial Intelligence Generated Works’ (2017) 2 Intellectual Property Quarterly 169, 175.

[8]P Narayanan, Intellectual Property Law (Eastern Law House, 4th edn 2017) 143–149; Tabrez Ahmad and Satya Ranjan Swain, Intellectual Property Law and Technology: A Practitioner’s Guide (LexisNexis India 2015) 189–196.

[9]The Designs Act 2000 (No 16 of 2000) (India), s 2(d).

[10]The Copyright Act 1957 (India), ss 2(c), 13, 2(d).

[11]The Copyright Act 1957 (No 14 of 1957) (India), s 2(d)(vi), as inserted by the Copyright (Amendment) Act 1994.

[12]The Patents Act 1970 (No 39 of 1970) (India), s 3(k).

[13]Shamnad Basheer and Mrinalini Kochupillai, ‘Assessing India’s Innovation Capacity: The Role of Intellectual Property Rights’ (2012) 17(1) Journal of Intellectual Property Rights 3, 8–14.

[14]Jane C Ginsburg and Luke Ali Budiardjo, ‘Authors and Machines’ (2019) 34 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 343, 351–358; Lior Zemer, The Idea of Authorship in Copyright (Ashgate 2007) 44–62.

[15]World Intellectual Property Organization, ‘WIPO Technology Trends 2019: Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO, Geneva, 2019) 17–25; WIPO, ‘Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO/IP/AI/2/GE/20/1 REV, 2020) 4–7.

[16]The Copyright Act 1957 (India), s 2(d); see also Russ Pearlman, ‘Recognizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Authors and Inventors Under U.S. Intellectual Property Law’ (2018) 24 Richmond Journal of Law & Technology 2, 9.

[17]Madelaine de Cock Buning, ‘Autonomous Intelligent Systems as Creative Agents under the EU Framework for Intellectual Property’ (2016) 7(3) European Journal of Risk Regulation 310, 315–319.

[18]Eastern Book Company v DB Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India) [16]–[18] (SH Kapadia J); cf Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service Co 499 US 340 (1991) (USSC) 345.

[19]Russ Pearlman, ‘Recognizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Authors and Inventors Under U.S. Intellectual Property Law’ (2018) 24 Richmond Journal of Law & Technology 2, 9–11; Benjamin L W Sobel, ‘Artificial Intelligence’s Fair Use Crisis’ (2017) 41 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 45, 58–67.

[20]The Designs Act 2000 (India), ss 2(j), 5.

[21]Niva Elkin-Koren and Eliot Salzberger, The Law and Economics of Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The Limits of Analysis (Routledge 2013) 101–118.

[22]The Copyright Act 1957 (India), s 17.

[23]Indian Contract Act 1872 (No 9 of 1872) (India), ss 23, 25; Tim Wu, ‘Tolerated Use’ (2008) 31 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 617, 621.

[24]Ryan Abbott, The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law (Cambridge University Press 2020) 88–92; Andres Guadamuz, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Copyright? Comparative Analysis of Originality in Artificial Intelligence Generated Works’ (2017) 2 Intellectual Property Quarterly 169, 175.

[25]Irene Calboli and Jane C Ginsburg (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of International and Comparative Trademark Law (Cambridge University Press 2020) ch 14.

[26]Cadbury India Ltd v Neeraj Food Products 2007 (34) PTC 95 (Del) (Delhi High Court) [22].

[27]Stacey L Dogan and Mark A Lemley, ‘The Merchandising Right: Fragile Theory or Fait Accompli?’ (2005) 54 Emory Law Journal 461, 478–482; Arpan Banerjee, ‘Judicial Approaches to Moral Rights in India: An Analysis’ (2011) 13(1) Intellectual Property Quarterly 72, 79–85.

[28]Eastern Book Company v DB Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India) [14]–[16]; cf Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service Co 499 US 340 (1991) (USSC) 345.

[29]Eastern Book Company v DB Modak (2008) 1 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India) [16]–[18] (SH Kapadia J).

[30]Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid and Luis Antonio Velez-Sanchez, ‘Copyrightability of Artworks Produced by Creative Robots and Originality: The Formality-Objective Model’ (2018) 19(1) Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology 1, 18–27.

[31]Thaler v Vidal 43 F 4th 1207 (Fed Cir 2022) (US Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit) 1213.

[32]Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] UKSC 49 (UK Supreme Court) [52]–[54] (Lord Kitchin).

[33]Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the Legal Protection of Databases [1996] OJ L77/20.

[34]British Horseracing Board Ltd v William Hill Organisation Ltd (Case C-203/02) [2004] ECR I-10415 (Court of Justice of the European Union) [38]–[42].

[35]Enrico Bonadio and Luke McDonagh, ‘Artificial Intelligence as Producer and Consumer of Copyright Works: Evaluating the Consequences of Algorithmic Creativity’ (2020) 9(1) Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 112, 118–124.

[36]World Intellectual Property Organization, ‘WIPO Technology Trends 2019: Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO, Geneva, 2019) 17–25; WIPO, ‘Revised Issues Paper on Intellectual Property Policy and Artificial Intelligence’ (WIPO/IP/AI/2/GE/20/1 REV, 2020) 4–7.

[37]The Copyright Act 1957 (No 14 of 1957) (India), s 2(d)(vi), as inserted by the Copyright (Amendment) Act 1994.

[38]Ginsburg and Budiardjo (n 14) 355–360; Lior Zemer, The Idea of Authorship in Copyright (Ashgate 2007) 55–62.

[39]Benjamin L W Sobel, ‘Artificial Intelligence’s Fair Use Crisis’ (2017) 41 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 45, 62–67.

[40]Carys J Craig and Ian R Kerr, ‘The Death of the AI Author’ (2021) 10(2) Ottawa Law Review 31, 44–55.

[41]Tim Wu, ‘Tolerated Use’ (2008) 31 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 617, 620–625; Nisha Rathi, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property in India: Current Landscape and Future Outlook’ (Bar and Bench, 2023) <https://www.barandbench.com/columns/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-india> accessed 1 March 2025.

[42]Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c 48) (UK), s 9(3).

[43]European Commission, ‘Proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act)’ COM(2021) 206 final, Arts 3, 52.

[44]Thaler v Vidal 43 F 4th 1207 (Fed Cir 2022) 1213; Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] UKSC 49 [52]–[54].

[45]Carys J Craig and Ian R Kerr, ‘The Death of the AI Author’ (2021) 10(2) Ottawa Law Review 31, 44–55; Enrico Bonadio and Luke McDonagh, ‘Artificial Intelligence as Producer and Consumer of Copyright Works’ (2020) 9(1) Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 112, 120.

[46]Shraddha Pandey, ‘Protecting AI-Generated Works Under Indian Copyright Law: Challenges and the Way Forward’ (Mondaq, 2023); Nisha Rathi, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property in India: Current Landscape and Future Outlook’ (Bar and Bench, 2023).