Cyber Humans and Intellectual Property Laws in India: an Interface

Since the late 19th century, there has always been a fictitious portrait of robots and artificial intelligence penetrating the normal functioning of a human’s life. But in the late twentieth century, the imaginary characters were shaping into reality, where once an impossible reality was becoming an emerging reality at the present stage of earthly life. Robotics and artificial intelligence assist humans in their daily chores and perform tasks too complex to be understood by humans. With Sophia, a robot but now a human counterpart, having been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, new doors of frequent encounters and easy access to artificial intelligence are being considered the new endeavour by various huge giants and business enterprises primarily engaged in artificial intelligence. With progress at such a vast scale, humans share a typical habitat with robots and machines assisted through artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics are creations made by humans for the advantage and development of humans. That certainly means that artificial intelligence and robots are products of human labour, novelty, and innovation. They could be categorized as inventions, and an invention is protectable under Intellectual Property Laws. Protecting the invention and the rights of the inventor of such inventions with the present legal regime is a challenge. In today’s digital era, the question is whether India's laws are sufficient to accommodate invention and development in the new, evolving cyber world. The paper attempts to analyze the accountability of present laws in India for the development of innovation and technology, the rights of the inventor and the need for guarding the new era of Artificial Intelligence.