Pranjeeta Singh, Bennett University
INTRODUCTION
The fast pace of advancement of technology is making it more crucial for software inventions to get Intellectual property protection. Software are intangible in nature and falls outside the basic category of traditional goods as when software is sold, license is handed over to buyers with specified rights indicating the dos and don’ts for the same. Further it has been noticed that Supreme Court considered software to be good in the case of Tata Consultancy Services vs State of Andhra Pradesh1 where irrespective of IP of a software, software computer can be considered as ‘goods’ and are also liable for taxes. IP Protection of software is crucial as due to fierce competition they can be outdated very easily by other competing product.
It is has been seen through a survey of RBI in 2017-18 that India’s software services increases by 11.6% to $ 108.4 billion and therefore seeing this growing expansion IP laws has been amended several times. Technical functionality is seen progressively shifting from hardware to software as implementing in latter is more rapid and fast cost-effective way to get a product to market. Companies need effective IP protection to gain a reasonable return on their R&D investments. Software is protected under patent, copyright and trade secrets and even though there laws regarding IP protection, country does not have a develop jurisprudence and therefore American approach is applied in such cases.
