Copyright Laws in India This document is intended to provide a brief overview of patent and copyright laws in India and a brief analysis on global issues related to such laws. India has made tremendous progress in the field of technology and ranks tenth in the world in terms of number of scientific and technical personnel. There may be hundreds of economic, legal and ethical issues that could have a global impact, but discussing them all here is nearly impossible. This article focuses only on key topics. India is rapidly growing as a leading software producer globally. It has occupied a secure place in the information technology arena by producing high-quality software products and software professionals. India also has a fairly well-developed system of infrastructure such as energy, transportation, communications and banking. The Indian government has recently taken an increasingly liberal approach to joint ventures and technology imports. The country also revised its patent law after several foreign companies filed lawsuits against local companies for patent infringement. Although computer programs are not currently patentable in India, the country is not devoid of software protection. Indian copyright law explicitly defines software as a literary work that can be protected. The statute gives to the central government of India. power to extend copyright protection to foreign works, if necessary. With the necessary protective statute in place, India just needs to enforce it. Enforcement in India, as in Mexico, actually appears to be a weak point in intellectual property enforcement. We will discuss the details of India's patent and copyright issues in the following sections of this document. Overview of Patent Laws in India Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provisions regarding protection of computer programs. Computer programs are not patentable in themselves, however a claim to a manner of manufacture, resulting in a tangible product requiring the application of an algorithm or a particular computer program, may be patentable. Under Section 3(k) of the Patent (Second Amendment) Bill 1999, "a mathematical or business method or computer program or algorithm" is not a patentable invention. It appears that computer programs capable of producing a technical effect could be admitted, in accordance with the recommendations made by... middle of paper... of the program, as free software.) would prohibit it. Conclusion The software is special. Nor can it be compared to a copyrighted novel nor to a piece of hardware or machinery. Software should be considered a special case as it constitutes a unique nexus between the immaterial world of abstract concepts and the concrete world of machines. New discoveries and inventions occur every day in this field. As we discussed earlier, there are many ethical problems if we protect software like any other engineering process, and there are many problems if we don't protect it. Being a responsible software engineer, I believe that software should be considered as a separate entity (different from other engineering processes or literary work) and that new laws applicable only to software should be defined. References. Patent and Copyright Law in India, http://www.singhania.com/ip/contents.htmlii. The Danger of Software Patents - by Richard M. Stallman, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-mec-india.htmliii. Free Software Philosophies and Intellectual Property - by Brett Watson,