Mumbai University Solved Question Papers
Intellectual Property and International Organisations and Agreements
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology
2025-26 Examination
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Mumbai
First published on munotes.in on 14 September 2026.
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Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2025-26 examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at September 2026, and six changes date most textbooks on this subject. The WTO's Appellate Body has been unable to hear appeals since 11 December 2019, so an appeal can be decided only where both parties have agreed to appeal arbitration, as members of the interim arrangement of 2020 have, and India has not joined it. The moratorium on non-violation complaints under TRIPS lapsed at the end of March 2026. Least developed countries need not apply most of TRIPS until 1 July 2034. WIPO administers twenty-eight treaties after two new treaties of 2024, and India joined the Strasbourg Agreement with effect from 7 July 2026. The Intellectual Property Appellate Board was abolished with effect from 4 April 2021. And the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Acts of 2023 and 2026 omitted sections 68 and 67 of the Copyright Act respectively.
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2025-26 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2025-26 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
Instructions printed on the paper
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Answer
For full marks, cover: the question asks for CHALLENGES, so organise the answer by the technology that creates each one rather than by type of right. Five are unavoidable in 2026: artificial intelligence as creator, the training of AI on protected works, deepfakes and voice cloning, borderless digital infringement, and standard essential patents in connected devices. Add software and biotechnology patenting, then the institutional strain. Use Thaler, ANI Media v. OpenAI, Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India, UTV Software v. 1337x.to and Ericsson v. Lava International, and end with India's response.
Intellectual property law was built on four assumptions. The creator is a HUMAN BEING. The right is TERRITORIAL, so it stops at the border of the State that grants it. Infringement leaves a COPY that can be found, seized and counted. And new technology spreads slowly enough for Parliament to legislate after it arrives. Each of the technologies of the last decade breaks at least one of these assumptions, and several break all four at once.
The challenge is therefore not that the law is old. The Copyright Act, 1957 has survived the photocopier, the cassette, the satellite and the internet by amendment. The challenge is that the latest technologies strike at the CONCEPTS the statutes are written in: author, inventor, copy, use, territory. Those words cannot be amended by adding a section, and courts are being asked to decide what they mean in situations no legislature foresaw.
The patent question. Thaler v. Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, [2023] UKSC 49, decided on 20 December 2023, is the leading authority. Dr Stephen Thaler filed two United Kingdom applications, for a food container and a flashing light beacon, naming as inventor his machine DABUS and claiming the right to the patents because he owned the machine. The Supreme Court held unanimously that an inventor under the Patents Act, 1977 must be a NATURAL PERSON, and that owning the machine gave Thaler no right to apply, because no doctrine of accession makes the owner of a machine the owner of an idea the machine produced.
India has now given the same answer. On 15 April 2026 the Indian Patent Office refused the Indian DABUS application, No. 202017019068, holding that an AI system cannot be the TRUE AND FIRST INVENTOR under sections 6, 7 and 10 of the Patents Act, 1970, and refusing it independently for want of an inventive step under section 2(1)(ja). The consequence is that an AI-assisted invention is patentable only where a human being who contributed to the inventive concept can be named, and an invention generated autonomously has no owner at all.
The copyright question. Thaler v. Perlmutter, decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on 18 March 2025, concerned an image called "A Recent Entrance to Paradise", which Thaler registered naming his Creativity Machine as the sole author. The court held that the Copyright Act of 1976 requires a work to be authored in the first instance by a HUMAN BEING, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari on 2 March 2026. The Copyright Office's report of 29 January 2025 adds that prompts alone do not supply the human authorship required.
Indian law is less settled, and the difficulty is textual. Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act, 1957 already provides that the AUTHOR of a computer-generated literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is THE PERSON WHO CAUSES THE WORK TO BE CREATED. Whether a person typing a prompt "causes" a work that a model composes is the question no Indian court has yet decided. Originality after Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1, requires a MINIMUM DEGREE OF CREATIVITY and skill and judgment, which points against protecting an output in which the human contribution is trivial.
A large language model is trained by copying enormous quantities of text, images and recordings, most of them protected. The question is whether that copying infringes, and if it does, whether any exception covers it.
ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI, in which the Delhi High Court passed its interim order on 24 July 2026, is the first Indian ruling. ANI, a news agency, alleged that OpenAI had trained ChatGPT on its reports, that the chatbot reproduced them and that it attributed fabricated statements to ANI. The court upheld its JURISDICTION, rejecting the argument that training on servers abroad placed the conduct outside India, because that would let infringers evade Indian law by locating servers overseas. It held that storing the articles was REPRODUCTION, but that prima facie it fell within the fair dealing exception in section 52(1)(a) for PRIVATE OR PERSONAL USE, INCLUDING RESEARCH, research not being confined to human activity. It found no prima facie infringement in the outputs and refused the injunction. The suit remains pending, and the reasoning is expressly provisional.
The English High Court reached a comparable result on a different route in Getty Images v. Stability AI, [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch). Getty's claim that importing the Stable Diffusion model was SECONDARY infringement failed because the model weights neither stored nor reproduced Getty's photographs, and so were not an INFRINGING COPY.
Governments are not waiting for the courts. A committee constituted by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released a Working Paper on Generative AI and Copyright on 8 December 2025 proposing a HYBRID MODEL: a mandatory blanket licence permitting training on lawfully accessed works, paired with a STATUTORY RIGHT TO REMUNERATION collected and distributed by a central body. The European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, instead requires providers of general-purpose models to adopt a COPYRIGHT POLICY respecting rightholders' reservations and to publish a SUMMARY OF TRAINING CONTENT. The challenge is that three major jurisdictions are answering one question three different ways, while the models are trained once and used everywhere.
Generative tools can now produce a convincing video of a film star endorsing a product or a song in a famous singer's voice. No Indian intellectual property statute protects a person's face, voice or mannerisms as such, so the courts have built PERSONALITY RIGHTS from privacy after K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, and from the law of passing off.
In Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India, decided by the Delhi High Court on 20 September 2023, the actor showed that his name, image, voice and the catchphrase "jhakaas" were being exploited through AI-morphed images, deepfake videos, GIFs, merchandise and domain names. The court granted an ex parte omnibus injunction restraining sixteen defendants from using any of these attributes, including through artificial intelligence tools, holding that the unauthorised commercial exploitation of a celebrity's persona injures both his livelihood and his dignity.
Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP, decided by the Bombay High Court on 26 July 2024, carried the protection to the VOICE. Platforms offered AI models that converted any input into the singer's voice. The court held that his name, voice, photograph and likeness are protectable attributes and restrained the defendants, observing that making such tools freely available endangers an artist's career. The regulatory response came in the IT Rules amendment notified on 10 February 2026 and in force from 20 February 2026, which requires SYNTHETICALLY GENERATED INFORMATION to be prominently LABELLED and requires intermediaries to take down non-consensual intimate imagery, nudity and impersonation within TWO HOURS of a complaint.
The internet dissolved the TERRITORIALITY on which enforcement depends. A pirate website can be hosted in one country, registered in another and viewed in India, and when it is blocked it reappears the next day under a new domain. Indian courts have answered by reshaping the remedy.
UTV Software Communication Ltd. v. 1337x.to, decided by the Delhi High Court on 10 April 2019 in CS(COMM) 724/2017, is the foundation. Film studios sued some thirty websites devoted to piracy. The court held that a ROGUE WEBSITE, one whose primary purpose is infringement, may be blocked in its entirety, and invented the DYNAMIC INJUNCTION: when a blocked site resurfaces as a mirror, redirect or alphanumeric variant, the plaintiff may have the new address added to the decree by application before the Joint Registrar instead of filing a fresh suit. It bears on the challenge because it treats the infringer as a moving target rather than a fixed defendant.
The counterweight is the SAFE HARBOUR in section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1, read "actual knowledge" in section 79(3)(b) to mean a court order or a government notification, which protects platforms from private censorship but slows the removal of infringing material. The unresolved tension between speedy removal and free expression runs through every platform dispute.
Every phone, car and smart meter implements technical standards such as 4G and 5G, and a single standard can be covered by thousands of patents held by dozens of companies. A patent that must be used to comply with a standard is a STANDARD ESSENTIAL PATENT, and its holder has promised the standard-setting body to license it on FAIR, REASONABLE AND NON-DISCRIMINATORY (FRAND) terms. The challenge is to prevent HOLD-UP by patentees demanding excessive royalties and HOLD-OUT by implementers refusing to pay at all.
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Lava International Ltd., decided by the Delhi High Court on 28 March 2024, is India's first final judgment in a telecommunications SEP suit. Ericsson alleged that Lava's phones infringed eight patents essential to the 2G, EDGE and 3G standards, and that Lava had refused a licence while continuing to sell. The court held seven patents valid and infringed, revoked one, fixed a FRAND royalty of 1.05 per cent of the net selling price and awarded damages of about Rs 244 crore. It shows courts setting global licensing economics in patent suits.
The competition side remains unsettled. In Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Competition Commission of India, decided on 13 July 2023, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held that the Patents Act, 1970 prevails over the Competition Act, 2002 where the abuse alleged arises from the exercise of patent rights. The Supreme Court dismissed the Commission's appeals on 23 September 2025 because the complainants had settled, but expressly KEPT THE QUESTIONS OF LAW OPEN, and on 2 February 2026 it stayed an NCLAT ruling to the same effect so that the jurisdictional question can be decided.
Section 3(k) excludes a MATHEMATICAL OR BUSINESS METHOD OR A COMPUTER PROGRAMME PER SE or algorithms. Ferid Allani v. Union of India, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 11867, held that the words PER SE were inserted so that genuine inventions developed on the basis of computer programmes are not refused, and that an invention producing a TECHNICAL EFFECT or a technical contribution may be patented. The Patent Office's Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions of 29 July 2025 now apply that test expressly to artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and quantum computing, but the line between an unpatentable algorithm and a patentable technical application remains the most litigated boundary in patent law.
Biotechnology raises the parallel problem. In Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, 569 U.S. 576 (2013), Myriad claimed isolated BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequences whose mutations indicate a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and used the patents to control diagnostic testing. The United States Supreme Court held that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a PRODUCT OF NATURE and not patent-eligible merely because it has been isolated, while synthetic complementary DNA is eligible. India reaches the same place by statute, through section 3(c) on discoveries of substances occurring in nature and section 3(j) on plants, animals and essentially biological processes. The newer challenge is DIGITAL SEQUENCE INFORMATION: genetic data can now be used without any physical sample leaving the country of origin, which escapes benefit-sharing laws written for physical access.
| Pressure | What technology does | Where the law strains |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Product cycles of months | Patent examination and litigation take years |
| Scale | Millions of works and uploads daily | Case-by-case enforcement cannot keep pace |
| Pressure | What technology does | Where the law strains |
|---|---|---|
| Territory | Services hosted anywhere | Rights and remedies stop at the border |
| Concepts | Machines generate and learn | Author, inventor and copy assume humans and copies |
| Balance | Essential technologies and medicines | Exclusivity collides with access, as in the COVID-19 debate |
The challenges pull in opposite directions, and that is what makes them hard. Rightholders argue that AI training and piracy threaten the incentive to create, and demand stronger rights and faster remedies. Users, developers and developing countries argue that over-protection will lock up the data, standards and medicines on which innovation and welfare depend. The TRIPS Agreement itself recognises both sides: Article 7 requires protection to contribute to the transfer and dissemination of technology in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare, and Article 8 permits measures to prevent the abuse of rights.
India's response has been pragmatic rather than legislative. The courts have built dynamic injunctions and personality rights, the Patent Office has issued guidelines, the executive has amended the IT Rules and consulted on AI licensing, but no amendment of the Copyright Act or the Patents Act has yet addressed artificial intelligence. That leaves the law to be made interlocutory order by interlocutory order, which is fast but uncertain.
Conclusion. The latest technologies challenge intellectual property at the level of its concepts. Artificial intelligence cannot be an INVENTOR, as Thaler v. Comptroller-General and the Indian Patent Office's refusal of the DABUS application on 15 April 2026 hold, nor an AUTHOR in the United States after Thaler v. Perlmutter. Training on protected works was held prima facie fair dealing under section 52(1)(a) in ANI Media v. OpenAI on 24 July 2026, while the DPIIT committee proposes a statutory licence with remuneration. Deepfakes and voice cloning are met by judge-made PERSONALITY RIGHTS in Anil Kapoor and Arijit Singh and by the 2026 labelling rules; borderless piracy by the DYNAMIC INJUNCTION in UTV Software v. 1337x.to; and standard essential patents by FRAND royalties fixed in Ericsson v. Lava, with the competition jurisdiction question still open before the Supreme Court. The underlying challenge is to keep the balance Article 7 of TRIPS requires between the incentive to create and access to what is created.
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