Copyright Protection for Video Game Characters and Fictional Personas in India

Few questions in intellectual property law generate as much commercial consequence and as little settled doctrine as the protection of fictional characters. A memorable character the hero of a beloved video game franchise, the protagonist of a globally distributed film series, the mascot of a decades-old animated property may be worth billions of dollars in franchise, licensing and merchandising revenue. That commercial value depends directly on the strength and clarity of the legal protection available to the character’s owner. Yet the law’s treatment of fictional characters sits at the intersection of some of copyright’s most contested doctrines the idea-expression dichotomy, the threshold of originality, the distinction between copyright and trademark and the uneasy question of whether a character can be independently protectable from the work in which it first appears.

In India, the protection of video game characters and fictional personas draws on the Copyright Act, 1957, supplemented by the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and general common law principles of passing off. The Copyright Act does not expressly address characters as an independent category of protectable subject matter like virtually every other copyright system, it protects works rather than characters per se. The question of character protection is therefore a question of how the general framework of copyright in artistic works, literary works and cinematograph films applies to the specific creative output of character design and development. The answers Indian courts have developed are substantive but incomplete, shaped by a handful of important decisions and by the general principles of the Act applied to the specific characteristics of visual and narrative characters.

Video game characters present distinctive copyright questions that fiction characters from literature and film do not raise in the same form. A video game character exists simultaneously as a visual artistic work the character’s distinctive visual design as depicted on screen as a literary work the character’s name, backstory, personality, dialogue and narrative role and as a dynamic audiovisual experience the character’s movements, animations, voice performances and interactive behaviours. The layered nature of a video game character’s existence across multiple copyright categories creates both richer potential protection and greater analytical complexity than the protection of characters that exist primarily in a single medium.

This article offers a comprehensive examination of copyright protection for video game characters and fictional personas in India examining the theoretical basis for character copyright, the specific application of Indian copyright doctrine to visual and literary character elements, the relationship between copyright and trademark protection for characters, the treatment of character merchandising rights, the enforcement of character rights against infringement and passing off and the emerging challenges posed by fan creation, artificial intelligence and the metaverse.

The Theoretical Basis for Character Copyright

The foundational challenge of character copyright is that copyright protects works specific expressions rather than the abstract creative concepts, personalities and traits that constitute a character. The idea-expression dichotomy, affirmed by Indian courts in R.G. Anand v. Deluxe Films & Ors. (1978) and consistently applied in subsequent decisions, means that copyright does not protect the concept of a brave warrior protagonist, a cunning villain or a comic sidekick only the specific expressive embodiment of such a concept in a particular work.

Two theoretical frameworks have been developed in copyright jurisprudence for justifying independent character protection beyond protection of the specific work in which the character appears.

The “story being told” test, developed in American jurisprudence and most clearly articulated in Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System (1954), holds that a character may be independently protectable separated from its original work and protected against use in other contexts only where the character is the “story being told” rather than merely a vehicle through which a story is told. On this test, only characters of sufficient specificity, development and distinctiveness characters so fully realised that they constitute the work’s primary creative achievement rather than a functional device for conveying narrative attract independent protection. Characters like Sherlock Holmes, whose rich personality, physical distinctiveness and specific attributes make them the true subject of the works in which they appear, satisfy this test. Generic or minimally developed characters do not.

The “sufficiently delineated” or “distinctly delineated” test, which has been adopted more broadly in American and English jurisprudence, holds that a character attracts independent copyright protection when it has been sufficiently delineated in the original work when the character’s specific expressive attributes are detailed and distinctive enough to distinguish the character from a general type or stock figure. The more fully developed, visually distinctive and personality-rich a character is, the more likely it is to attract independent protection.

Indian courts have not expressly adopted either test by name, but their analysis of character protection cases reflects the underlying logic of both assessing whether the character’s specific expressive attributes are sufficiently distinctive and detailed to constitute original creative expression protectable by copyright. The Sholay Media and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Parag Sanghavi (2015) decision, which recognised copyright in the visual characters and artistic elements of the film Sholay, reflects a version of the delineation test applied in the Indian context.

Visual Character Design – Artistic Work Copyright

The most clearly protectable element of a video game character or fictional persona under Indian law is its visual design the specific artistic work depicting the character’s appearance. A distinctive visual character design the particular combination of physical features, costume, colour palette, proportions and visual styling that gives a character its recognizable appearance is an artistic work within the meaning of Section 2(c) of the Copyright Act. As an original artistic work, it attracts copyright under Section 13(1)(a), subject to the general requirement of originality.

The copyright in a visual character design protects the specific artistic expression of the character’s appearance as depicted in the original work. It does not protect the general concept of the character’s type, the character’s name or the narrative attributes of the character’s personality. What it protects is the specific visual rendering the way in which the character’s appearance has been given concrete, original artistic form in the copyright owner’s works.

The originality requirement for visual character designs is readily satisfied for most professionally created game and animation characters. The design of a distinctive video game character involving specific choices about the character’s physical proportions, facial features, colour scheme, costume design and overall visual aesthetic involves a degree of creative judgment that well exceeds the “minimal creativity” standard of Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak (2008). Character designers for major game studios and animation companies make hundreds of specific expressive choices in creating a character’s visual identity and the resulting design is clearly an original artistic work reflecting the designer’s intellectual creation.

The scope of the copyright protection afforded to a visual character design is determined by the specificity of the character’s visual attributes. A character with highly distinctive and detailed visual features an unusual combination of physical characteristics, a unique costume design, a specific colour scheme enjoys broader protection against copying than a character whose visual design is more generic. The more distinctive the visual design, the more a competing character’s appearance must differ to avoid infringement; the more generic the design, the more the competitor can capture without copying the protected expression.

The application of the artistic work copyright to three-dimensional representations of characters merchandise, action figures, plush toys and collectibles engages the Section 15 analysis of the boundary between artistic copyright and industrial design discussed in the article on artistic copyright. Where a visual character design is applied to three-dimensional merchandise manufactured on an industrial scale, the Section 15(2) fifty-article rule may operate to channel the protection from copyright to the Designs Act, 2000 framework. Rights holders who intend to commercialize character designs through merchandising should ensure that they have registered the relevant designs under the Designs Act before the fifty-article threshold is crossed.

Literary Character Elements – Names, Personalities and Backstories

The literary elements of a video game character or fictional persona the character’s name, personality traits, backstory, dialogue and narrative attributes raise more complex copyright questions than the visual design. These elements exist at varying distances from the idea-expression line, with some clearly within the domain of protectable expression and others clearly within the domain of unprotectable ideas.

The character’s name “Mario,” “Lara Croft,” “Master Chief,” “Aloy,” “Kratos” is the most familiar and commercially valuable identifier of a fictional character, but it is also the element of a character that copyright is least equipped to protect. A single word or short phrase the typical form of a character name generally does not attract copyright protection as a literary work because it lacks the creative development necessary to constitute an original literary work. The protection of character names is therefore primarily a matter for trademark law rather than copyright, a point developed in detail below.

The character’s personality traits, behavioral characteristics and psychological attributes occupy an ambiguous space in the idea-expression analysis. At the level of general type the brave hero, the cowardly villain, the wise mentor these are unprotectable ideas that copyright does not exclude from the public domain. At the level of specifically realized and uniquely expressed personality the particular combination of specific traits, expressed in specific behaviours, dialogues and narrative situations that give a character their unique identity the expression of personality may attract copyright as an element of the literary work in which the character appears.

The character’s backstory the narrative history that explains who the character is and how they came to be in their current situation is, where it constitutes an original literary work of sufficient creative development, protectable by copyright as part of the literary work. The specific narrative choices about a character’s origins, their relationships, their formative experiences and the events that shaped their identity are expressive choices that, accumulated, constitute the literary work of character development. Copying that specific narrative expression reproducing the specific story of a character’s backstory rather than the general concept of a tragic origin or heroic journey constitutes infringement of the literary copyright in the work.

The character’s dialogue the specific words attributed to the character in the game, the film or the novel is literary work of a very clear kind and is protectable as such. The specific language, phrasing, verbal tics and expressive speech patterns that give a character their distinctive voice are original literary expression. A competing work that reproduces a character’s distinctive dialogue verbatim infringes the copyright in that dialogue, even if the competing work does not reproduce the character’s visual design.

Video Game Characters as Audiovisual Works

Video game characters are unique among fictional characters in that they exist not merely as visual designs or literary creations but as interactive audiovisual experiences moving images, animations, sound effects, voice performances and interactive behaviours that together constitute the character’s presence in the game world. This audiovisual dimension of video game characters creates additional layers of copyright protection beyond the artistic and literary work copyrights discussed above.

The Copyright Act’s definition of “cinematograph film” in Section 2(f) any work of visual recording on any medium produced through a process from which a moving image may be produced by any means is broad enough to encompass the pre-rendered cutscenes and animated sequences in which video game characters appear. The producer of these sequences holds copyright in them as cinematograph films under Section 14(d), in addition to any copyright in the underlying artistic and literary works that constitute the character.

For the real-time rendered animations that constitute a character’s in-game movement and behaviour animations generated by the game engine in response to player inputs rather than pre-recorded the cinematograph film analysis is more complex. These animations are generated procedurally rather than recorded and their status as cinematograph films within the meaning of Section 2(f) depends on whether the real-time rendering process constitutes “visual recording on any medium.” The better view is that real-time rendered game content does attract copyright protection, either as part of the computer program that generates it or as an artistic work in the character’s design assets, but this analysis has not been tested in Indian courts.

The voice performances of actors who provide the voices of video game characters attract performers’ rights under Section 38 of the Copyright Act. The voice actor whose performance gives a character their distinctive vocal quality, speech patterns and emotional register has performers’ rights in that performance including the right to control the making of recordings of the performance and the right to prevent distortion of the performance under Section 38B’s moral rights provisions. As AI voice synthesis technology advances, enabling the generation of realistic synthetic performances in the style of real voice actors, the performers’ rights framework becomes increasingly relevant to video game character protection.

The Software Copyright Dimension

Video game characters are embedded in and expressed through computer programs the game software that implements the character’s visual representation, behaviour, physics and interaction with the game world. The copyright in the computer program that implements a character is a separate and additional layer of protection that supplements the artistic, literary and audiovisual copyrights in the character’s specific design elements.

Under Section 14(b) of the Copyright Act, the computer program that implements a video game including all the code that defines how game characters are rendered, animated and controlled attracts copyright as a literary work. The reproduction of a game’s computer code without authorization infringes this copyright independently of any infringement of the artistic or literary works comprising the game’s characters and content.

The practical significance of the software copyright in the character protection context arises primarily in cases of game cloning where a competitor creates a game that reproduces not merely the general gameplay concept but the specific implementation details of the original game’s character behaviour, physics and interaction systems. Where the cloning involves reproduction of substantial portions of the original game’s code, the software copyright provides a direct enforcement basis independent of the character design and literary copyrights.

The Indian Judicial Framework – Key Decisions

The judicial development of character copyright in India is less extensive than in the United States or the United Kingdom, but several significant decisions have established important principles.

Sholay Media and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Parag Sanghavi (2015) is the most significant Indian decision directly addressing copyright in fictional characters. The Delhi High Court recognised that the distinctive characters of the iconic film Sholay Jai, Veeru, Gabbar Singh and Basanti attracted copyright protection as artistic and literary works, independently of the copyright in the film itself. The Court held that the visual design of these characters, their distinctive personalities and the specific expressive attributes that give them their recognisable identities constitute original creative expression protectable by copyright. The defendant’s creation of three-dimensional figurines replicating the visual design of these characters was held to infringe the copyright in the original artistic works. The Sholay decision is the Indian authority for the proposition that sufficiently distinctive and well-developed fictional characters attract copyright protection as artistic works and it establishes the framework for character copyright analysis under Indian law.

Star India Pvt. Ltd. v. Leo Burnett India (2003) involved the television character “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” and raised questions about the protection of television character elements including visual design and personality attributes. The Bombay High Court’s analysis affirmed that television characters whose visual design and personality attributes are sufficiently distinctive may attract copyright protection and that the unauthorized use of such characters in advertising constitutes infringement.

Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates (1978) an American case whose analysis has been cited in Indian copyright decisions held that cartoon characters with distinctive visual designs constitute protectable artistic works and that the reproduction of those characters’ specific visual design in an infringing work constitutes copyright infringement regardless of the narrative context in which they are reproduced. The “story being told” test, applied in this case, has been referred to in Indian copyright literature as context for character protection analysis.

Mattel Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla (2008) involved copyright in the SCRABBLE board game, addressing the protectability of game elements including character-like game pieces and distinctive design elements. The Delhi High Court’s analysis of what elements of a game attract copyright protection provided a foundation for subsequent analysis of video game character protection.

Character Merchandising and Commercial Exploitation

The commercial exploitation of fictional characters through merchandise toys, clothing, accessories, bedding, stationery and a limitless range of consumer products bearing character imagery generates enormous economic value for character rights holders and represents one of the primary commercial justifications for strong character copyright protection. The licensing of character rights for merchandise is a multi-billion-dollar industry globally and its significance in India is growing rapidly as the Indian consumer market for character-branded products expands.

Under Indian copyright law, the reproduction of a character’s visual design on merchandise the printing of a character’s image on a t-shirt, the moulding of a character’s form as an action figure, the embroidering of a character’s design on a bag constitutes reproduction of the artistic work comprising the character’s visual design under Section 14(c)(i). This reproduction requires the authorisation of the copyright owner of the artistic work.

The Section 15(2) fifty-article rule, discussed above, is the primary legal complication in character merchandising. Where the character’s visual design is applied industrially to merchandise manufactured in quantities exceeding fifty articles the copyright protection gives way to the design registration framework of the Designs Act, 2000. Rights holders who commercially exploit their characters through merchandise at industrial scale must ensure that the relevant design is registered under the Designs Act to maintain protection.

In practice, major character rights holders register their character designs under both the Copyright Act (through copyright registration of the artistic work) and the Designs Act (through registration of the design as applied to specific articles), providing a belt-and-suspenders approach that ensures protection under both frameworks regardless of the Section 15(2) threshold.

The right of publicity the right of individuals and character owners to control the commercial use of their identity, persona or likeness provides supplementary protection for character merchandising beyond copyright. While the right of publicity is not expressly codified in Indian statute, Indian courts have recognised it as a common law right derived from the constitutional right to privacy and the general principles of personality rights. The Delhi High Court’s decision in DM Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House (2010) recognised the right of publicity in the context of a celebrity’s persona and held that the unauthorised commercial exploitation of a celebrity’s image in merchandise constitutes both a tort and a basis for injunctive relief. The principles of this decision have been applied in the character context to protect distinctive character personas from unauthorised commercial exploitation.

Trademark Protection for Characters – The Complementary Framework

Copyright protects the specific expressive embodiment of a character the original artistic work, the literary expression. Trademark protects the character’s identifying function in commerce the character name, the distinctive visual design as a source identifier and other character attributes used to identify goods and services originating from the character owner’s business. The two forms of protection are complementary rather than alternative and sophisticated character rights holders typically maintain both copyright and trademark protection for their significant character properties.

The Trade Marks Act, 1999 permits the registration of visual marks, word marks and combination marks that function as source identifiers in trade. A distinctive character design the specific visual appearance of a video game character used on merchandise and in promotional materials may be registered as a device mark identifying goods and services originating from the character’s rights holder. A character’s name may be registered as a word mark for relevant goods and services. The combination of the character’s visual design and name as a composite mark provides the broadest trademark protection.

The primary advantage of trademark protection over copyright for fictional characters is its potentially unlimited duration trademark rights persist as long as the mark is in use and the registration is renewed, whereas copyright eventually expires. For classic character properties video game franchises, animated characters and fictional personas that may remain commercially active for many decades trademark protection ensures that the character’s identifying function remains protectable even after the copyright in the original artistic works has expired.

The secondary meaning doctrine the principle that even a descriptive or non-inherently distinctive character element may acquire trademark protection through sustained use in commerce extends trademark protection to character elements that might not be registrable as marks initially but which, through widespread commercial use, have come to function as source identifiers in the relevant market. A character design that initially lacks sufficient distinctiveness for trademark registration may acquire the necessary distinctiveness through years of use in commerce, at which point trademark registration becomes available.

The passing off doctrine the common law protection against misrepresentation in trade provides a further dimension of protection for character properties, enabling rights holders to prevent the use of character elements that would cause consumers to believe that the defendant’s goods or services are associated with or endorsed by the character rights holder. Passing off is particularly valuable for protecting character elements names, visual designs, personality attributes that may not be registered as trademarks but which have acquired sufficient reputation in the relevant market to generate consumer expectations of source.

Fan-Created Content and Character Copyright – The Grey Zone

The creation of fan fiction, fan art, fan games and other fan-created content based on copyrighted fictional characters is a vast and culturally significant creative practice that exists in a legal grey zone under Indian copyright law. Fan creators routinely reproduce, adapt and build upon copyrighted characters drawing fan art of game characters, writing fan fiction featuring fictional personas, creating fan-made games based on commercial properties in ways that technically engage the copyright owner’s reproduction, adaptation and communication rights.

As discussed in the article on copyright in social media and user-generated content, Indian copyright law does not provide a specific exception for fan-created content and the fair dealing exceptions under Section 52 are not clearly applicable to most forms of fan creation. The absence of a specific parody or satire exception means that fan creators who wish to create critical or transformative works based on copyrighted characters cannot rely on any specific statutory protection.

In practice, the major character rights holders game developers, film studios, animation companies have generally adopted a policy of tolerating non-commercial fan creation while acting against commercial exploitation of fan works. This policy reflects both the cultural value of fan engagement and the pragmatic recognition that enforcing copyright against millions of fan creators would be commercially counterproductive and reputationally damaging. However, the legal position that fan creation without authorisation constitutes infringement of the copyright in the character remains unchanged by this policy of non-enforcement.

The distinction between non-commercial fan creation and commercial exploitation is the operative line that rights holders enforce in practice. Fan art sold on print-on-demand platforms, fan games offered for purchase and fan-created merchandise sold through commercial channels are more likely to attract enforcement action than personal fan art shared freely on social media. Rights holders treat the commercial element as the trigger for enforcement, reflecting the principle that the copyright system is primarily concerned with protecting the commercial exploitation of works rather than personal creative engagement.

Video Game Characters and Artificial Intelligence

The intersection of artificial intelligence with video game character protection raises questions that are at the frontier of both AI law and character copyright. Three specific scenarios deserve examination.

• The first is the use of AI to generate new characters based on prompts describing existing copyrighted characters. Where an AI image generation system is used to create an image of a character described as resembling a specific copyrighted game character “generate an image of a character who looks like [named copyrighted character]” the resulting image may infringe the copyright in the original character’s visual design if it reproduces the specific distinctive visual elements of that design. The AI system’s generation of a close visual replica of a copyrighted character design is not a defence to infringement the fact that an AI rather than a human made the specific visual choices that resulted in the infringing image does not change the infringement analysis for the original rights holder.
• The second is the use of AI to generate content dialogue, narrative scenarios, gameplay situations featuring existing copyrighted fictional characters without the rights holder’s authorisation. Fan creators who use AI writing tools to generate fan fiction featuring copyrighted characters, game developers who use AI dialogue generation to create unauthorised game mods featuring licensed characters and content platforms that host AI-generated content featuring copyrighted characters all engage the copyright in the literary and artistic works comprising those characters in ways that require analysis under the existing infringement framework.
• The third is the use of character performance data to train AI models the feeding of video game animation data, voice performance recordings and character behaviour datasets into machine learning systems. Where a character’s physical movements have been captured through motion capture from a real performer, that captured performance data may attract performers’ rights under Section 38. Where the voice performance of a character’s voice actor is used to train an AI voice model without the performer’s consent, both the performers’ rights in the voice recording and potentially the rights management information provisions of Section 65B are engaged.

Protection in the Metaverse and Virtual Environments

The emergence of virtual worlds, metaverse platforms and blockchain-based virtual economies has created new contexts for character exploitation and new challenges for character rights protection. Video game characters and fictional personas are deployed in virtual environments in ways that were not contemplated by the existing copyright framework and their protection in these environments requires extension and adaptation of existing principles.

Virtual world platform operators and users increasingly create virtual environments in which users can encounter, interact with and deploy virtual versions of characters from external franchises. The deployment of a game company’s character in a virtual world without authorisation creating an avatar that replicates the character’s visual design and persona engages the copyright in the original character’s artistic and literary works. The communication of the character to the public in the virtual environment engages the communication right under Section 14(c)(ii). The creation of an interactive avatar replicating the character constitutes an adaptation of the original artistic work under Section 14(c)(v).

nit-based character assets unique digital tokens associated with video game characters or fictional personas present a specific set of copyright questions discussed in the article on copyright in photographs and artistic works. The sale of an nit associated with a character’s image does not transfer the copyright in the character to the nit buyer unless the nit terms of sale specifically provide for copyright assignment. Character rights holders must ensure that any nit projects involving their characters clearly address the copyright position either retaining copyright while granting limited use rights to nit buyers or making specific copyright assignments where that is commercially appropriate.

Cross-Border Protection – International Dimensions

Video game characters and fictional personas are typically created by companies in one jurisdiction and exploited globally across many territories. The international dimension of character protection requires an understanding of both the territorial character of copyright and the international frameworks that create reciprocal protection obligations.

Under the Berne Convention, to which India is a member, works of Indian creators including Indian video game characters and fictional personas attract copyright protection in all other Berne Union member states on the same terms as the domestic works of those states. Similarly, characters created by rights holders in other Berne Union member states attract copyright protection in India on the same terms as Indian characters, through the International Copyright Order, 1999.

The global nature of video game publishing and the multinational character of major gaming companies means that character copyright disputes frequently involve multiple jurisdictions. An Indian company that creates a video game character in India and exploits it globally must consider the copyright protection available in each major market. An international company that exploits its characters in India must understand and comply with Indian copyright law including the specific provisions of the Copyright Act that may differ from the company’s home jurisdiction.

Practical Guidance for Character Rights Holders

For game developers, animation studios and other creators of fictional characters seeking to maximise the protection available under Indian law, the following practical guidance reflects the interaction of copyright, design and trademark frameworks.

Copyright protection should be secured through registration of all significant character designs as artistic works with the Copyright Office of India. As discussed in the article on copyright registration, registration creates a prima facie presumption of ownership that facilitates enforcement and simplifies the evidentiary burden in infringement proceedings. Character designs, character art books, sprite sheets, concept art and other visual representations of the character should all be registered.

Design registration under the Designs Act, 2000 should be obtained for character designs intended for application to merchandise before the fifty-article threshold is crossed. The design registration protects the applied design from reproduction on competing merchandise and operates independently of the copyright framework’s Section 15(2) limitation.

Trademark registration under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 should be obtained for character names, distinctive visual designs used as source identifiers and other character elements used in commerce to identify the rights holder’s goods and services. Trademark registrations should cover all relevant classes of goods and services, including entertainment services, computer games, toys and games, clothing and any other product categories in which the character is commercially exploited.

Employment and contractor agreements with character designers, writers and other creative contributors must include express copyright assignment provisions, ensuring that copyright in the characters vests in the company rather than in the individual creators. As discussed in the article on copyright due diligence in M&A transactions, the adequacy of these agreements is a critical element of character rights ownership.

Conclusion

The protection of video game characters and fictional personas under Indian copyright law is a multi-layered enterprise that combines copyright in artistic works, copyright in literary works, copyright in computer programs, performers’ rights, industrial design protection, trademark rights and passing off remedies into a comprehensive if complex intellectual property framework. No single legal instrument provides complete protection; the effective protection of a commercially significant character requires the coordinated deployment of all available legal tools.

The foundational principle is clear enough: sufficiently distinctive and fully realized fictional characters whose visual design and expressive attributes reflect original creative expression attract copyright protection as artistic and literary works and the unauthorized reproduction of those protected elements constitutes infringement. What Indian law lacks is the well-developed jurisprudence that would define with precision the threshold of distinctiveness and development required for independent character protection, the specific scope of protection afforded to different categories of character elements and the treatment of the specific challenges fan creation, AI generation, metaverse deployment, nit commercialization that the contemporary creative economy presents.

These gaps will be filled, incrementally, by judicial decisions and legislative developments that the Indian IP system has not yet fully produced. Until they are, rights holders must operate with a degree of legal uncertainty that careful intellectual property management comprehensive registration, well-drafted employment and contractor agreements, coordinated copyright and trademark protection and proactive enforcement can significantly reduce but not entirely eliminate.

The creative and commercial importance of fictional characters in the contemporary economy and the specific significance of video game characters as India’s gaming industry grows rapidly ensures that these questions will receive increasing judicial and legislative attention in the years ahead. The framework this article has examined is the foundation on which that attention will build.

References

1. The Copyright Act, 1957, Sections 2(c), 2(d), 2(f), 13, 14, 15, 17, 38, 38B, 51, 55, 57, 65B – https://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1958.pdf
2. The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 – https://copyright.gov.in/Documents/Amendment_Act2012.pdf
3. The Designs Act, 2000 – https://ipindia.gov.in/writereaddata/Portal/IPOAct/1_31_1_design-act-2000.pdf
4. The Trade Marks Act, 1999 – https://ipindia.gov.in/writereaddata/Portal/IPOAct/1_30_1_trade-marks-act-1999.pdf
5. Sholay Media and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Parag Sanghavi, CS(OS) 1892/2015 (Delhi High Court, 2015) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/50984038/
6. DM Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House, (2010) 43 PTC 191 (Delhi High Court) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1382884/
7. D.P. Dhanukar v. M/s. Lalithambika Enterprises (1990), Kerala High Court – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1763541/
8. Star India Pvt. Ltd. v. Leo Burnett India Pvt. Ltd., (2003) 27 PTC 81 (Bombay High Court) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1218916/
9. Mattel Inc. v. Jayant Agarwalla, (2008) 37 PTC 212 (Delhi High Court) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1317128/
10. R.G. Anand v. Deluxe Films & Ors., AIR 1978 SC 1613 (Supreme Court of India) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/595730/
11. Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1023365/
12. Amarnath Sehgal v. Union of India, 117 (2005) DLT 717 (Delhi High Court) – https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1402532/
13. Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, 216 F.2d 945 (9th Cir. 1954)
14. Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works – https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/
15. TRIPS Agreement – https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips.pdf
16. Copyright Office of India – https://copyright.gov.in
17. Intellectual Property India – https://ipindia.gov.in

Frequently Asked Questions:

Compulsory Licensing Copyright Act Copyright Act 1957 copyright case laws Copyright Enforcement Copyright Infringement Copyright Law Copyright Registration Copyright Rules Descriptive Marks India Indian IP Framework Indian Patent Act Indian Patent Law Indian Trademark Law Intellectual Property Law IP Law India Patent Claims Patent Enforcement Patent Infringement Patent law Patent Revocation Patents Act 1970 Section 9 Trade Marks Act Section 29 The Patent Act 1970 Trademark Infringement Trademark Registration Trade Marks Act 1999 Trade Marks Rules 2017 TRIPS Compliance