Abstract
India’s defence research sector has integrated artificial intelligence into some of its most critical operating systems, however the legal framework governing the intellectual property arising from these is yet to keep pace. India’s Patent Act 1970, which governs the inventorship was made for the world of human inventors and offers no answer to the question: When an AI system generates a defence innovation, who owns it? This article argues that India urgently needs a dedicated legal framework for patents arising from AI-assisted and AI-generated inventions in the defence sector, one that also clearly defines the role and rights of private sector partners, whose participation has become essential to India’s defence innovation ecosystem. Without this framework, strategic technologies risk remaining legally unprotected, disputes between public and private claimants may arise, or vulnerable to foreign assertion.
