Protection of Graphical User Interfaces in India: Copyright or Design?

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Adhyasha Samal of the Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur.]

Graphical User Interfaces (“GUIs”) refer to the visual elements of a user interface that facilitate interaction between the user and the system. GUIs are rapidly evolving and are applied in personal computers as well as phones, tablets, e-watches and other smart devices. Preceded by command-line interfaces which required users to enter a command in the text box to complete a function, GUIs came into existence when Xerox Corporation created the first personal computer, Alto, containing the first GUIin 1970. It was soon followed by Apple’s Macintosh and Microsoft’s MS Windows.

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Post-Crypto-Writ Judgement: How(ey) to regulate the ICOs?

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Harshit Goyal, currently in his 3rd year at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.]

Imagine that you get to know about a cryptocurrency that had been launched recently and has been selling like hotcakes. The price of this token has been on a steep rise, and thus, you also decide to invest a dear amount in it. How will you feel if the value of this cryptocurrency plummets the very next day to rock bottom? Worse, how will you feel if you get to know that the law had done absolutely nothing to prevent such a situation?

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Examining Artificial Intelligence and Privacy in the light of COVID-19

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Suvam Kumar, a 3rd year student at National Law University, Jodhpur.]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the frailty of mankind’s societies and systems. In spite of tremendous progress made by humans in several fields of life, we are rendered helpless by the rapid and uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus. In these crucial times, the role of Artificial intelligence (“AI”) becomes very important and countries like China, USA, Canada, Australia, and India have leaned on AI to fight the pandemic. The use of AI has also been approved by the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) which has emphasized the role of AI as a panacea to fight this pandemic. However, the widespread use of AI is not without its own challenges and risks. There are serious concerns regarding the application of AI in the health sector especially during a pandemic like COVID-19; however, they can be mitigated by utilizing a legal regime that regulating AI effectively and conscientiously.

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Artificial Intelligence as an Inventor: Introducing a New Patent Paradigm in India

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Lavanya Jha (West Bengal University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata) & Shreya Jha (Amity Law School, Delhi).]

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was coined by American computer scientist John McCarthy during the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1956. It was understood as a system of solving complex problems through reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, navigation, natural language processing, and perception. The shared conception regarding AI has been that it is a method of data processing, wherein the lack of involvement of a processor allows it to have an independent “mind”. Therefore, a processing device like a digital computer through which AI related tasks are accomplished can be viewed as a fundamentally detached, objective observer whereas intelligent behavior can be viewed as a determinate set of independent elements. AI’s primary features can be characterized as unpredictability, rationality, independence, efficiency and accuracy, thereby allowing it to create “patentable” inventions.

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India’s 5G Trial: The Case for Huawei’s Exclusion

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

[This post has been authored by Sarthak Gupta of the Institute of Law, Nirma University.]

5G is the next big change awaiting mankind. It is not just an incremental change but rather represents a paradigm shift in technology. Among other things, it is going to have a huge impact on the national and economic security of countries. As a result, a safe and reliable framework for the development of 5G technology is very much critical for a nation’s ability to preserve its sovereignty.

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Blockchain in the paradigm of GDPR (Part II)

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

[This is the second part of a two-part article by Muskan Agarwal (National Law Institute University, Bhopal) and Arpita Pandey (National Law Institute University, Bhopal). Part 1 can be found here.]

Previously, the authors looked at the contradictions between blockchain and GDPR with regard to the principal obligations enlisted in GDPR. In this post, the authors will carry out a feasibility assessment of the solutions proposed.

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