Student Blog

Hello, we are Unnati Rajput and Shabnam Mehrabi, international students studying LLM Intellectual Property Law.

One of the most interesting units we had this semester was Contemporary Issues in Intellectual Property Law and given that the ownership of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has dominated most discussions in this legal domain, we were elated to attend the guest lecture by Professor Jonathan Barros Vita from the University of Marilia in Brazil.

Our Backgrounds:

Unnati: I am a qualified Intellectual Property, Media, and Entertainment Attorney with four years of experience in law firms and in-house legal teams in Mumbai, India.

I choose a postgraduate degree to get a global perspective on various aspects of Intellectual Property and emerging technologies.

Shabnam: I am a lawyer in Iran and have been practicing for over 10 years. Intellectual Property Law in Iran is growing and not many people in my country are aware of its importance.

I had many clients who were business owners, and their main concerns related to protecting their products and brands. I believe that knowing about emerging phenomena like Artificial Intelligence will expand my knowledge and expertise as a qualified lawyer in this sector to support clients.

Guest lecture: ‘AI, art, the shifting paradigm of authorship & its economic impacts’

Hearing Professor Jonathan Barros Vita’s insights on the topic was truly eye-opening, helping us to expand our critical thinking. Some of the key takeaways from the lecture were:

AI is on its way to transform the way humans live and work. Although it has unbelievable benefits, the emergence of AI has raised multiple issues. These range from concerns about raising unemployment and the economic impact to authorship and ownership of intellectual property.

Given the increased use of AI in our day-to-day lives, as Intellectual Property lawyers the main question the lecture posed was – who owns AI-created content?

Is it the person who wrote the prompt in the AI module?
Is it the company that owns the AI software?
Is it the owner of copyrighted material that the AI used to create new content?
Or is all content owned by the AI Machine/software itself?

This question has been and will continue to be debated by various legal scholars and professionals.

Professor Jonathan Vita started by explaining the difference between human & machine learning. The discussion took an interesting turn when we covered questions related to ownership of and liabilities of AI works. We were provided interesting examples including the Harry Potter x Balenciaga creation and a situation where an accident takes place due to two self-driving cars. Who would be liable in such cases?

The lecture propelled us to think about the multiple possibilities of national and global legal gaps with the rise of AI. Professor Jonathan Vita presented a different cultural perspective, his opinions, examples, and anecdotes gave us much broader insights. The lecture concluded with an important thought – AI can support and propel humankind to immense growth, however, we must ensure its use is done in a way that it doesn’t adversely affect human beings.