Navigating the AI and IP Frontier: CII-TCS Report on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property

Something fundamental has changed in how businesses innovate. A few years ago, AI was a tool that helped. Today, it is a tool that creates. It writes code, generates designs, drafts contracts, and in some cases produces inventions that no single human could claim sole credit for. That shift sounds exciting, and in many ways it is. But it has also quietly created one of the most complex legal puzzles modern business has had to face. 

Who owns what AI creates? Who is liable when it goes wrong? And what happens to the rules that were written long before any of this was possible? 

These are not abstract questions. They are landing on the desks of legal teams, product managers, and policymakers right now. And for India, a country moving fast on AI adoption while still building out its regulatory architecture, the answers matter enormously. 

That is the conversation the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have stepped into with their 2025 report, Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges in a Transformative Era. It is a study that does not flinch from the hard questions, and it arrives at exactly the right moment. 

The Numbers Tell Their Own Story 

Start with the scale of what is already happening. The report states that AI patent filings in India jumped from 3,931 in the period between 2010 and 2018 to over 83,000 between 2019 and 2025.1 Grant rates have risen from 0.7% in 2019 to 32% in 2024. Domestic applicants, who once filed just over half of all AI patents, now account for 82% of filings. Indian innovators are not watching from the sidelines. 

Inside organisations, adoption is just as striking. Nearly 70% of businesses surveyed during this study are already running AI assisted or AI powered operations. Among MSMEs, that figure is 63%. These are not experimental deployments. This is mainstream, and it is moving quickly. 

The Rules Have Not Kept Up 

Here is where the story gets complicated. IP law was built around a simple assumption: a human being created something, and that human being deserves protection. AI does not fit that model, and courts around the world are now having to work out what to do about it. 

The US case of Thaler v. Vidal drew a firm line. Only a human can be named as an inventor. AI holds no rights. A separate ruling in Recentive Analytics v. Fox Corp. went further, throwing out patents built on routine machine learning tasks. The message to industry is blunt: dressing up an AI application as an invention is unlikely to survive legal scrutiny. 

Copyright is an even more tangled space. Disputes over training data, AI generated content, deepfakes, and voice cloning are moving through courts from New Delhi to New York. The boundaries around authorship and fair use are being redrawn in real time. When the report surveyed organisations about their biggest IP concerns, three issues tied at the top: using copyrighted training data without clear permission, the absence of regulatory guidance, and the fundamental question of who counts as an author or inventor when AI is doing much of the work. 

What Businesses and Policymakers Need to Do 

The report does not leave readers without direction. For businesses, the priorities are practical. Keep detailed records of the human decisions that shaped an invention. Write patent specifications that show genuine technical advancement, not just AI involvement. Vet training data before using it. Maintain audit trails. Monitor for trademark infringement proactively. These are not bureaucratic exercises. They are the difference between owning your innovation and losing it. 

For policymakers, the ask is more structural. Patent law needs to evolve alongside AI rather than lag behind it. New frameworks for AI generated assets deserve serious consideration. And India, given its scale and ambition, has both the incentive and the standing to push for international alignment on these rules rather than simply waiting for other countries to set the agenda. 

For MSMEs, the report is especially candid. The tools and knowledge needed to navigate this environment are not yet accessible enough. Affordable governance frameworks, open-source datasets, subsidised infrastructure, and targeted upskilling are not optional additions to the policy conversation. They are essential to whether smaller businesses get to participate in the AI economy at all. 

India’s Moment to Shape the Future 

India has genuine momentum here. The patent numbers show real innovation. The workforce is young, skilled, and growing. The policy ambition, from the IndiaAI Mission to national AI governance frameworks, is serious. 

But momentum is not the same as leadership. The next decade will test whether India can move from fast adoption to active standard setting, from a country that uses AI to one that helps define how the world governs it. The decisions made now, by businesses, by regulators, and by industry bodies, will determine which side of that opportunity India ends up on. The groundwork for that conversation starts here. 

To read the entire report, visit: https://ciiipr.in/pdf/CII%20TCS%20-%20AI%20and%20IP%20Report%202025.pdf