Ankit Sahni

Ankit represents clients in a diverse array of enforcement, contentious and transactional IP and technology law matters covering a variety of industries.

His practice is widely recognized by the industry and media, for which he has been featured as one of the 50 Most Influential People in IP - 2021 by Managing IP, ranked in the World Trademark Review 1000, ranked by Leaders League, featured as one of Super 50 Lawyers in India by Thomson Reuters ALB. He also featured in the Forbes Legal Powerlist 2020 and 2021 as one among top 100 lawyers in India.

In November 2020, Ankit commissioned an Artificial Intelligence based painting tool called RAGHAV (an abbreviation for Robust Artificially Intelligent Graphics and Art Visualizer). The tool creates paintings with the assistance of human input. Ankit filed several copyright applications before the Indian Copyright Office, the Canadian IP Office and the US Copyright Office as legal test cases. The application that identified the AI tool and him as co-authors was eventually granted registration in India and Canada, becoming the first copyright applications in the world where an Artificial Intelligence tool was recognized as an ‘author’ under Copyright law.

Ankit serves as an Expert Member at the European Observatory on Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights, a regulatory body that functions as a policy think tank for the European Union IP Office. 

He also represents INTA on an inter-governmental European Cooperation Working Group that is responsible for developing the roadmap for the adoption of emerging technology such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data and IoT by the European Union IP Office and IP Offices of member countries.

He was invited as an expert witness to present his views before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, while examining legislative reforms to the Intellectual Property Rights regime in India.

He has had the privilege of submitting before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology while examining the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2020.

Ankit has been serving on International Trademark Association’s (INTA) Committees for over 7 years, and is currently a member of the Blockchain Subcommittee. He is also a member of the INTA Task Force on the UK-India Free Trade Agreement.

He holds the distinction of being one of India’s youngest to qualify Microsoft Certified Professionals (at age 14).

He is the revising author of the 2021 edition of the Lal’s Commentary on Copyright Act.