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Introduction
Indian courts have, in recent times, increasingly been confronted with novel legal questions arising from the intersection of AI-generated outputs and the rights that may subsist in, or be affected by, such outputs.
A recent order of the Registrar of Copyrights of 31 August 2026 (“DABUS Order”) in an application filed by Dr. Stephen L. Thaler seeking registration of copyright in the work titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”, has denied the ownership of the said work to DABUS. The DABUS Order comes as another novel development in the field of legal status of AI-generated works.
The DABUS Order rejects an application to register the artistic work “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” represents a clear and direct application of Section 2(d)(vi) of the Indian Copyright Act, which defines “author” therein. Interestingly, even though the AI platform was denied authorship of the artistic work, the Registrar held that an autonomously AI generated output may satisfy the requirement of “originality” under Section 13 of the Indian Copyright Act, which lays down the works in which ‘copyright’ exists.
Construct of Ownership of AI Generated work under the Indian Copyright Act
Section 2(d)(vi) of the Indian Copyright Act allocates authorship of a computer-generated work to “the person who causes the work to be created”. For each class of work the Legislature has traced the originator and allocated authorship to a “person” recognised under law, including the composer for musical works, the person taking the photograph, the producer for cinematograph films.
The DABUS Order provides a clear illustration to explain the ownership of authorship: a manuscript may pass through researchers, editors, proof-readers, typists, illustrators and printers, and a play through directors, actors and technicians, yet the Indian Copyright Act confers authorship on none of them. The issue before the Registrar was however, whether DABUS, the artificial intelligence system, can be considered as “the person who causes the work to be generated”.
Key Holdings in the DABUS Order
The Registrar adopted a strict interpretation of Section 2(d)(vi) to state that the Legislature did not identify the computer, software or generative system as the author. The provision identifies the author as the “person” who causes the work to be created. Since DABUS is not a juristic person under law, the Registrar denied authorship to the AI system under the Indian Copyright Act.
The Registrar provided an opportunity to Dr. Thaler amend the author entry in his application to himself, but he declined and maintained that DABUS would continue to be identified as the author. The DABUS Order nevertheless found that Dr. Thaler was the person who caused the particular work to be created and could be identified as the statutory author and, under Section 17, ordinarily the first owner of the said work (if the application was corrected).
The Registrar also rejected the Applicant’s reliance on the 2024 reply by the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry in the Rajya Sabha, which states that the existing legal framework under the Indian Copyright Act is adequately equipped to protect AI generated work. It was distinguished on the point that Section 2(d)(vi) of the Indian Copyright Act expressly bars ‘ownership’ to AI systems, and executive clarifications or replies cannot alter or expand plain statutory language.
The Registrar summarised six holdings: (i) the work satisfies the originality threshold under Section 13; (ii) DABUS cannot be entered as author under Section 2(d)(vi); (iii) Dr. Thaler is the legally recognised person who caused the work to be created; (iv) identifying DABUS as author and Dr. Thaler as owner is legally inconsistent with Sections 2(d)(vi) and 17–19; (v) no descriptive reference to DABUS can either confer upon it the legal status of an ‘author’ or cure the application; and (vi) whether legal personhood or authorship should ever be extended to an AI system is a policy decision reserved for Parliament.
Similar Adjudications to the DABUS Order
The Calcutta High Court in Indiamart Inter Mesh Ltd. v. Open AI Inc. held, prima facie, that ChatGPT is not an ‘intermediary’ under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act”) and is not a search engine because large language models scour data, apply algorithms and return synthesised responses; that it is “the source of new content”. The Court held, prima facie, that ChatGPT falls within ‘originator’ under the IT Act i.e., a person who sends, generates, stores or transmits an electronic message, or causes one to be so sent, but excluding an intermediary. The Indiamart judgment supports the Registrar’s observation in the DABUS Order that an output generated by AI may satisfy the requirement of ‘originality’ under law.
Conclusion
The DABUS Order is the first of its kind in Indian jurisprudence, opening up a host of legal questions on attribution of authorship to works created by artificial intelligence. The Registrar’s closing observation is an important concluding point: whether legal personhood or authorship should ever be extended to autonomous artificial intelligence is a policy decision reserved for Parliament and cannot be introduced by administrative reinterpretation.
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