Patentability of artificial intelligence (AI) inventions: A comparative study of Section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970 and the United Kingdom's journey from Aerotel to emotional perception AI

This article undertakes a comparative doctrinal analysis of the patentability of artificial-intelligence (AI)-related inventions under Indian and UK patent law. Between 2023 and early 2026, the Delhi High Court, in a series of decisions culminating in Kroll Information Assurance, LLC v Controller General of Patents , refined the ‘technical effect/technical contribution’ threshold that governs the exclusion of ‘a computer programme per se’ under Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, 1970. That threshold has since been codified, with AI-specific illustrations, in the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions, 2025, issued on 29 July 2025. The United Kingdom's position developed less smoothly. In Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents , a permissive first-instance ruling was reversed by the Court of Appeal, which reaffirmed the primacy of the long-standing four-step Aerotel test, before the Supreme Court, on 11 February 2026, overruled Aerotel altogether and adopted an approach modelled on the European Patent Office's ‘any hardware’ doctrine. This article argues that, notwithstanding these divergent statutory architectures and procedural histories, India and the United Kingdom have arrived at a structurally similar solution: a low, largely formal threshold for patent eligibility, followed by a substantive technical–character enquiry applied at a later analytical stage.