Alliance Center for Intellectual Property Rights (ACIPR), under the aegis of Alliance School of Law, Alliance University organized an event bringing together, founder and partners of the premier law firms in the country for the National Workshop on the theme of ‘Artificial Intelligence’s Impact on Intellectual Property’ on the World Intellectual Property Day, 2023.

The event witnessed participation of law students, academicians, and legal professionals from across the country. More than 130 participants joined the workshop in the online mode from Law Schools and Law offices across the country, as well as more than 120 students joined the workshop in the offline mode. The event was also captured in WIPO’s World Intellectual Property Day’s event-calendar. The opening ceremony commenced with the introduction of the theme of the event and importance of World IP Day, 2023.

The event began with a welcome speech by Dr. Kiran Dennis Gardner, Dean, Alliance School of Law addressing the participants on the evolution of Intellectual Property Laws. She expressed her gratitude towards the guests for their time and effort, followed by felicitation of the guests. After which, a handbook on ‘Biodiversity Protection in India’ was unveiled by the esteemed dignitaries along with the editors of the book.

The keynote speaker for the workshop was Dr. Sheetal Vohra, Managing Partner and Founder of Vohra & Vohra, Gurgaon, Haryana. She discussed the prospects of choosing IPR as a career and that this area of law brings a lot of exposure not only nationally but also internationally. Further, she also spoke on the importance of the knowledge on commercial law, criminal law, and civil law to excel in the field of IP. Dr. Vohra also discussed in brief, the basics of IPR. Upon the completion of the keynote address, the first resource person for the event, Mr. Bharadwaj Jaishankar commenced a discussion on the topic ‘Ownership Issue in AI-generated IP’. Mr. Bharadwaj began the discussion by explaining the ownership issue including the areas of copyright and AI. He stated the Monkey Selfie Case of 2021 to explain the role of AI. He gave a brief about commercializing AI products and that determining ownership under AI is a complex question. He closely dealt with the case of Super Cassettes v. Myspace. He raised the issues pertaining to the use of ChatGPT including its advantages. The discussion was further opened to the audience, for asking questions and clarifying certain “myths”.

The second resource person for the workshop was, Ms. Ramya Rao, Partner (Computer & Electronics, Design), K&S Partners, Bengaluru. Ms. Ramya started the discussion on the topic, “Ethical considerations in AI and Intellectual Property: Balancing innovation and social impact”. She began the proceeding by giving brief insights on IP, its kinds, Patent, forms of IP, and the need for IP protection. The discussion included AI inventions and the patentability of AI. The discussion was carried forward by Mr. Madhusudan S.T, Partner & Practice Lead (Electronics & Engineering), K&S Partners, Bengaluru. He gave the historical background of IP and stated that the applications of AI in healthcare, legal, automobile, etc., have pros and cons. He also discussed some interesting bits like Sophia, an AI that has been granted citizenship in Dubai, and the Chat GPT, which hit 100 million subscribers. Disruption of AI in healthcare has some negative impact and also disruption of AI in the financial and legal sector has also been influenced. He also started some discussions on privacy issues created by AI. He concluded by suggesting precautionary measure and awareness has to be taken before deployment of AI or related tools.

The event was coordinated by Dr. Upankar Chutia, Prof. Chakravarthy Naik, Prof. Abhishek Sarma and Prof. Shubhi Trivedi from Alliance Center for Intellectual Property Rights (ACIPR).

The workshop was concluded by a vote of thanks to all the stakeholders for making this event a great success.