Rise of the machines: AI and Copyright

Intelligent machines are here, but they do not come as conquerors, they come as creators. From designing websites and writing essays to producing code and generating artwork, there is little Open AI’s Chat GPT, a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence chatbot, cannot do. And while human efforts to train computers to produce…

IPR and Digital Piracy: A Lost Cause

Recently, the New Zealand Court of Appeals approved an American re­quest to extradite one of the world’s most celebrated digital pirates, Kim Dotcom, back to the United States. American prosecutors had alleged that the creator of megaupload.com had cost copyright holders upwards of $500m (Rs 3,454 crore) in unpaid royalties on pirated…

Is IPR moral?

Consider this scenario. A dominant world power forces all other countries to sign a treaty acknowledging that its IPR will be respected. It then creates laws allowing its citizens to register food grain grown in other nations as original inventions in its own country. The world power now uses the…

High fashion knock-offs

This year’s Lakme India Fashion week in New Delhi ended with designer Suneet Verma alleging fellow designer Aki Narula of plagiarising one of Verma’s designs and passing it off as his own. The outfit in question was part of Verma’s fall/winter 2003 collection and featured in the designer’s advertising campaign…