28/09/2026
Who owns innovation when AI is in the mix? Our Columbia India Hour earlier this month with Shyam Balganesh (Columbia Law School) and Bahram Vakil (AZB & Partners) explored the evolving landscape of AI and intellectual property/copyright. A few things stayed with us.
* Around 147 lawsuits are filed against AI developers in the US, and the two major rulings so far are early-stage and narrow. In India, the Delhi High Court's ANI v. OpenAI decision stretched a research exemption written for humans to cover model training. Both speakers asked whether courts should be making that kind of policy call at all, or whether it's Parliament's job.
* In the US cases, the real trouble came from how the data was obtained, not how the model was trained.
* On the practical side, licensing deals between publishers and AI companies are already happening at a scale that makes the lawsuits feel a bit beside the point.
* AI can't be an author, but what about someone who spends 15 hours in conversation with a chatbot to produce a novel? Co-authorship might be a better frame.
*The advice for young lawyers: write your own thinking first, then compare it with what AI gives you. Never let AI think first.
Thank you to both speakers, and to everyone who joined us. The Columbia India Hour is our bi-monthly series connecting Columbia alumni and the wider community with the ideas shaping our world. Watch the entire recording and register to future Columbia India Hour sessions at the link in the bio.
Coming up next on Oct 07: Catch Sunil Gulati, Leeza Mangaldas and Harsh Jain, all of whom have seen sport from a different vantage point, in a conversation on economics, leadership, strategy, and decision-making, on and off the field.
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