It was brought to our notice that the submission, which had previously secured second place in the 2024 Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition on IP Law, contains substantial portions taken from a piece that the author had previously co-authored and submitted to another competition. After an internal review, it was determined that the above allegations are true and the concerned submission, by Aditya Sushant Jain for the essay titled “The Copyright Black Box In Training AI Solving The Rubix Cube Through Public Interest”, is to be disqualified.
Consequently, the third prize winner has been moved up to the second prize, and there will be no third prize for the 2024 edition of the essay competition. The revised list of the winners for the 2024 Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition is –
The First Prize– Yogesh Byadwal, from National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, for the essay titled, “What Applies to You, Does Not Apply to Me: The Hypocrisy of Companies Owning ML Systems”
The essay is available here.
The Second Prize – Kartik Sharma, from National Law School of India University, Bengaluru for the essay titled ‘What’s in a Name? Critiquing The Copyright “Owner’s” Backdoor into the House of Copyright “Society”
The essay is available here.