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Copyright Laws in India Essay

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Copyright Laws in India

This document is intended to give a brief overview of the patent and copyrights laws in India and a brief analysis on global issues related to these laws. India has progressed enormously in the field of technology and is ranked tenth in the pool of scientific and technical personnel in the world. There may be hundreds of economical, legal, ethical issues that might have global impact but discussing all of them here is almost impossible. Only the key issues are focused in this paper.

India is quickly growing as leading world software producer. It has occupied a secured place in information technology arena by producing high quality software products and software professionals. India also has a fairly well …show more content…

The law relating to computer software has been clarified. Although software per se is not patentable, software configured to achieve a particular technical result may be. Previous practice was to grant patents only to software coupled with hardware.

But, U.S. law does not restrict patent only to physical article or process to manufacture such physical article. It says that any software is patentable if it satisfies the conditions of novelty, unobvious ness and utility. Since patenting of software offers much better protection than copyright in software, many Indian technical professionals are considering the option of patenting their software in U.S. One may make an application for patent in U.S. either by making Provisional Patent Application ('PPA') or Regular Patent Application ('RPA').

India is also a party to Patent Co-operation Treaty ('PCT'). Under PCT, an Indian resident can make an International Application ('IA') for registering patent. The applicant has to submit an application in pre-scribed format to the National Patent Office of its country ('Receiving Office') and designate the countries in which it desires to register the patent. Receiving Office would check the completeness of the IA as required under the PCT and accord International Filing Date ('IFD') to IA. International Bureau together with the Receiving Offices

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