Registration of "Suryast" with the RAGHAV AI tool as co-author (Copyright Office, India)

The Copyright Act, 1957 does not say whether a machine can be an author. Section 2(d)(vi), added by the 1994 amendment, provides that for a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work "which is computer-generated", the author is "the person who causes the work to be created". The Act also names the "artist" as the author of an artistic work in Section 2(d)(iii). Neither the Act nor the Copyright Rules define "person" in this clause.²¹⁰

SpicyIP noted in 2022 that there was no Indian precedent treating software as an author and no policy guidance on whether only humans can be authors.³ The "Suryast" registration was the first test of the question before the Copyright Office, and it has been discussed since as an example of the Office's uncertain approach, even though it is an administrative entry rather than an adjudication.¹³

Ankit Sahni is an IP lawyer who owns the RAGHAV app. According to Managing IP, the app was built in 2019 by machine-learning engineer Raghav Gupta under a project funded by Sahni, and its name stands for "robust artificially intelligent graphics and art visualizer".¹⁴ The US Copyright Office's Review Board records Sahni's description of how "Suryast" was made. He took an original photograph, fed it into RAGHAV, and used Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night as the "style" input. He then chose a variable value that determines the amount of style transfer, and RAGHAV generated the output without further modification by him.⁵

Sahni filed two applications in India. The first listed RAGHAV as the sole author and was rejected. The second named both Sahni and the AI as co-authors, and registration was granted in November 2020, with Sahni as the claimant and owner.¹³ SpicyIP's Aparajita Lath wrote in October 2022 that the Office's basis for granting the second application was unclear, and suggested that it may have been granted by mistake, creating a "paradox" in which a co-author registration naming an AI could be used as a shield against infringement claims.³ Sahni told Managing IP in 2021 that the registration marked "the beginning of an era of change" and that he expected it might be challenged because of ambiguity in the law. The registration was also part of confidential submissions he made to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on protecting AI-created works, which published its report on 23 July 2021 and recommended reviewing the Copyright Act and Patents Act to incorporate AI.¹

About a year after the registration, the Copyright Office sent Sahni a notice dated 25 November 2021. It invited his attention to Section 2(d)(iii), under which the author of an artistic work is the artist, and Section 2(d)(vi), under which the author of a computer-generated work is the person who causes it to be created. It asked him to inform the Office of the legal status of the "Raghav Artificial Intelligence Painting App". Managing IP described it as a withdrawal notice and reported on 13 December 2021 that Sahni had replied.²

Sahni responded on 8 December 2021 with a 17-page submission. His main points, as Managing IP reported them, were:²

• The Copyright Act has no provision allowing the Registrar to review his own decision, unlike Section 127 of the Trade Marks Act and Section 77 of the Patents Act.
• The Act does not allow the Registrar to withdraw a registration after it has been granted, and the notice "does not place reliance on any provision of the act".
• The Act protects computer-generated works, so the Registrar could not withdraw the entire registration.
• Neither the Act nor the Rules define "person" in Section 2(d)(vi), and the inclusive definition in the General Clauses Act covers artificial and juristic persons.
• The Registrar's only remedy is a rectification petition before a High Court under Section 50 of the Copyright Act.

Sahni said that his stated goal was to keep the AI-authorship debate alive until decision-makers reach a policy or legislative change.² SpicyIP reported in December 2023 that Sahni contested the Office's power to review its own decision, that no action appeared to have been taken, and that the work was still listed in the register.⁴

Sahni applied to register the work in the United States on 1 December 2021, listing himself as author of "photograph, 2-D artwork" and RAGHAV as author of "2-D artwork". The US Copyright Office refused registration on 29 June 2022 for lack of human authorship. After a first request for reconsideration, it concluded on 10 April 2023 that the work was a derivative work without enough original human authorship. On 11 December 2023 the Review Board affirmed the refusal on a second request. It found that RAGHAV, and not Sahni, determined how the features of the base photograph appeared in the output, rejected his description of RAGHAV as "assistive software", and held that his choices of base image, style image and style-transfer value did not amount to sufficient human authorship.⁵

SpicyIP reported that the work was registered in Canada, where Sahni argued that his creativity and RAGHAV's were inseparable and that the two were therefore joint authors. The same article contrasts these outcomes with the Beijing Internet Court's finding that an AI-generated image can be protected where the human user's intellectual investment shows originality.⁴

The Indian dispute turns on whether "person" in Section 2(d)(vi) can include a software tool and whether the Registrar can revisit a registration. Commentators have pointed out three problems. First, a 2026 SpicyIP analysis argues that the Act's scheme of ownership, term of protection and moral rights presupposes a human author and that Section 2(d)(vi) cannot be stretched to cover a non-human one, because it names a "person" whose causal contribution makes them the author.¹⁰ Second, SpicyIP wrote in 2022 that the Office appeared to have granted the registration without applying its mind, and that this could now require litigation.³ Third, the same post warned of a "paradox": a co-author registration that names an AI may be procedurally available and usable as a shield against infringement claims.³

SpicyIP's December 2023 commentary adds that it is unclear how a non-human can be a joint author, as Canada allows, and that relying on the AI's creative input weakens a human-authorship argument elsewhere. It recommends that Indian legislators decide whether AI can be an author, whether human co-authorship is required and what degree of contribution suffices, and that the register require disclosure of AI contribution, as under the EU AI Act.⁴ A 2024 practitioner article described the matter as a case in which the Copyright Office first rejected the AI-only application, then granted the co-authored one, and later issued a withdrawal notice, which it said highlights ambiguity over whether AI can qualify as an artist.⁸

In April 2025 the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) constituted an eight-member committee on generative AI and copyright. Part I of its working paper, released on 9 December 2025, deals with training data and proposes a blanket licensing model, and it left copyright in AI outputs for a Part II. MediaNama could not find a published Part II as of September 2026.⁶

On 31 August 2026 the Registrar of Copyrights rejected an application by Stephen Thaler that named his AI system DABUS as the author of an artwork. The Registrar held that DABUS is not a natural or juristic person and cannot be author under Section 2(d)(vi), and that the person who caused the work to be created is the statutory author. The order does not mention Suryast or RAGHAV, but MediaNama observed that if DABUS cannot be an author, the same reasoning applies to RAGHAV.⁶⁹ Thaler's counsel includes Ankit Sahni, and Thaler told MediaNama that he intends to use the RAGHAV registration to show inconsistency in the Office's administrative history, while acknowledging "conflicting reports regarding the status or attempted withdrawal" of that registration.⁷

As of September 2026, MediaNama independently verified that the 2020 registration naming RAGHAV as co-author of Suryast remains on the Indian register.⁶⁷ No Indian court has adjudicated the validity of the registration, and no decision on the withdrawal notice of 25 November 2021 has been reported. The Copyright Office has not said whether it will revisit the entry in light of its August 2026 order. As of 15 October 2026, no development after the September 2026 reports has been verified for this entry.