Intellectual property professionals in Sri Lanka are pushing for updates to the Intellectual Property Act to handle creations by artificial intelligence, EconomyNext reported in February 2024.

“Our Intellectual Property Act established in 2003 recognizes only a human as an author,” Sidath Gajanayaka, a lawyer and lecturer said at a panel discussion on Integrating AI into Human Lives: Legal Challenges in the Age of AI in February, the publication reported.

Section 5 of the IP law describes an author as “the physical person who has created the work”, he said. As artificial intelligence creates an increasing amount of creative content, including written copy and visual works, Sri Lanka faces the same questions about its IP laws and how they might apply to content created by non-humans.

“We must look at how much of a human intervention is there to write an article,” Gajanayaka said at the conference. “Who is recognized as the author is a dilemma. Ideally, it is a person who gave the prompt.” Gajanayaka thinks that giving joint authorship to the person issuing the prompt and the machine may be a possibility, EconomyNext reported.

Sri Lanka continues to face economic challenges; its economy contracted 3.8 percent in 2023, according to World Bank estimates. A severe foreign exchange crunch is widely seen to be responsible for the current crisis.

Sri Lanka’s government has renewed its focus on creating trade deals to foster economic growth, including inking a free trade agreement deal in February with Thailand.

“This move aims to enhance market opportunities, with negotiations covering various aspects such as trade in goods, investment, customs procedure and intellectual property rights,” a statement published that month by the Sri Lankan president’s media department.

A delegation led by Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin visited Colombo to sign the FTA along with other agreements. The prime minister and his delegation also attended Sri Lanka’s 76th Independence Day celebrations on Sunday.

“This will provide tremendous business opportunities for both sides. We encourage our private sectors to explore the potentials of two-way trade and investment,” Srettha told a joint media briefing following the signing of the deal.

According to media reports, Sri Lanka’s primary exports to Thailand include tea and precious stones to Thailand, from which it imports electronic equipment, food, rubber, plastics and pharmaceuticals.

Sri Lanka has seen a boost in foreign tourists since the 2019 Easter bombings of luxury hotels and churches, after which tourist arrivals dropped drastically. The Covid-19 pandemic followed shortly thereafter, further depressing tourist arrivals. But in 2023, Sri Lanka had seen more than 1.3 million tourist arrivals by mid-December, data shows, the first time arrivals have crossed the 1 million mark in four years. Most tourist arrivals in 2023 were from India, but Russian tourists have added to the tally, as Russian tourists remain unwelcome in many nations.

It is against this backdrop of optimism that we bring you Sri Lanka’s IP Experts, a list of 15 key intellectual property lawyers in Sri Lanka. Heritage Partners (Suren Gnanaraj and Eric Dathika Wikramanayake), John Wilson Partners (Sameendra Perea and John Wilson) and Sudath Perera Associates (Himani Perera and Sudath Perera) each placed two lawyers on our list. A total of 12 firms are represented on this year’s Top 15 list.

Most of the lawyers named to our list have multiple practice specialties. Many of them are litigators, while others concentrate on prosecution work or provide strategic advice.

All of them have something in common: they are experts in their fields and, in one way or another, they provide extra value for their clients. They are Asia IP’s Sri Lanka IP Experts. – GREGORY GLASS

Sri Lanka’s IP Experts is based solely on independent editorial research conducted by Asia IP. As part of this project, we turned to in-house counsel in Sri Lanka, Asia and elsewhere around the world, as well as South Asia-focused partners at international law firms, and asked them to nominate private-practice lawyers including foreign legal consultants, advisers and counsel.

The final list reflects the nominations received combined with the input of the editorial team at Asia IP, which has nearly 50 years of collective experience in researching and understanding Sri Lanka’s legal market.

All private practice intellectual property lawyers in Sri Lanka were eligible for inclusion in the nominations process; there were no fees or other requirements for inclusion in the process.

The names of our 15 IP Experts are published here. Each IP Expert was given the opportunity to include their biography and contact details in print and on our website, for which a fee was charged.