LL.M Dissertation 2025-26
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Item Access to Diagnosis and the Right to Healthcare: A Rights-Based Approach to Understanding Section 3(I) of the Patents Act, 1970(NLUJAA, 2026) Anjali BrahmaPatent law is based on the idea that knowledge can be transformed into property. Patent law seeks to promote innovation and technological advancements by granting exclusive rights over an invention.1 It rests on the idea that granting patent rights will increase private gains to the innovators for their intellectual labour, stimulating innovation.2 It imposes costs on society, as well as benefits.3 This model is effective in industrial contexts, where inventions are often capable of replication and commercial exchange to protect the rights of the interest holder. However, when it is applied in the context of medicine, this framework encounters a fundamental difficulty, as medicine is not merely technical but is closely tied to human dignity, ethical responsibility and public welfare. Medical knowledge goes beyond mere commodification, and involves the discovery of natural relationships, biological processes, and diagnostic correlations.4 As a result, not all forms of medical knowledge can be easily treated as private property.Item Menstrual Health Health and Law in India: An Analytical analytical Study(NLUJAA, 2026) Anisha BaroMenstruation is a natural physiological process experienced by women and girls across the world. Yet, for millions of women and girls in India, what ought to be an ordinary biological occurrence is rendered an ordeal by persistent stigma, inadequate legal protection, and systemic neglect of menstrual health infrastructure. The right to health, enshrined as an indispensable component of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution of India,2 demands that the State not merely refrain from obstructing health but actively ensure conditions conducive to it. Menstrual health, being inseparably linked to the dignity, equality, and bodily autonomy of women and girls, falls squarely within this constitutional guarantee.Item The Legal Status of “Producer” Under the GI Regime in India: A Jurisprudential Analysis(NLUJAA, 2026) Aniket JanaGeographical Indication (GI), it might seem a fairly easy prima facie, but the question is deceptive in its simplicity. When any consumer goes to buy a can of Darjeeling tea, a pure Kanchepuram silk saree, or a Scotch Whiskey, he or she is implicitly trusting the name on the label and has reason to believe that the product is a genuine one of a specific region or place and is produced by a group of people or community that carries the knowledge, skill and tradition that the product is known for. This belief or trust is the economic and moral foundation of the law of GI. The Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 of India1 (hereinafter will referred as GI Act) was adopted and enacted on the backdrop of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), 19942. This agreement has a avowed policy that commits to empowerment in the rural area, while preserving the cultural integrity and the upliftment of economic status of the artisan communities. The Act creates a Sui generis regime that distinguishes between the “registered proprietor”3 and a “authorised user”4. This is the distinction that, prima facie, appears to be a functional administrative device, but upon the jurisprudentiaal scrutiny, this reveals a deep structural gap between formal ownership and substantive entitlement.Item Evaluating CSR Implementation Models in the oil and Gas Sector: A Comparative Study of Public and Private Corporations in the North-East(NLUJAA, 2026) Angkita DasCSR (CSR) has become one of the core concepts in the context of contemporary corporate governance, as there is an increasing demand that corporations ought to incorporate social, environmental and ethical concerns in their businesses. Historically, corporate law was dominated by a great degree of importance on the principles of shareholder primacy which focused on the understanding that the main responsibility of the corporate managers was toward their shareholders, and that they needed to maximise the wealth of the shareholders. This view was most popularly expressed by Milton Friedman who believed that the social responsibility of business was to make more profits within the law of the land.1 Nonetheless, the growth of corporate operations and their devastating effects on societies and nature has brought more and more criticism toward this tunnel vision.At its essentialism, CSR tries to harmonize the growth in economy and the standards of sustainable growth and social responsibility. Instead of profitability being taken as the only goal of the corporate activity, CSR encourages corporate decision making processes to be integrated with environmental protection, ethical business behavior and welfare of the community. The change is the more notable in the industries that can be defined by the intensive extraction of resources, i.e., the oil and gas industry, in particular. The activities of corporate social responsibility2 within these industries tend to cross over with issues affecting the environmental condition, the rights of the indigenous people and developmental issues affecting the region hence increasing the argument of responsible corporate behavior. As a result, CSR has also become realised as one of the means by which corporations are able to deal with the broader implications of their action in society.Item Internet Shutdowns, Content Blocking, and Democratic Backsliding: A Critical Evaluation of IT Act Mechanisms in Maintaining Public Order versus Suppressing Voice,”(NLUJAA, 2026) Amin Rosul BarbhuiyaThe internet has ceased to be a luxury and has become the essential infrastructure of modern democratic life. It is the medium through which citizens communicate with each other and with their governments, through which journalists report on public affairs, through which political parties organise and campaign, through which students learn, through which businesses operate, and through which civil society holds state power accountable . When a government orders the internet to be shut down whether by cutting off access entirely, throttling it to a speed that makes it practically useless, or blocking specific platforms or websites it is not merely disrupting a communications service. It is disrupting the exercise of the most fundamental rights that a democratic constitution guarantees its citizens. It is suppressing speech, preventing assembly, disrupting livelihoods, and degrading the informational environment upon which democratic selfgovernance depends.Item The Impact of Copyright Infringement on Regional Cinema: A Case Study of Assamese Filmmakers(NLUJAA, 2026) Akib Tahjibur RahmanThis cultural plurality and linguistic diversity are the points of difference between India and many other nations. The existence of various film industries, producing movies in accordance with their own culture and society, is a testament to the cultural diversity of the country. Industries like the Hindi film industry, commonly known as Bollywood, and more recently the South India film industries as well, have a huge audience and are commercially dominant. Most of these regional industries are thriving not just in India but all over the world, mostly because of the existence of a global audience for it, with the Indian diaspora scattered across the globe. But a case can be made that public discourse, state policy, international trade negotiations and academic legal inquiry have historically favoured these industries as they generate a lot of revenue, and in turn taxes.Item Residence-Based Reservation by States in Higher Education: A Constitutional Analysis(NLUJAA, 2026) Afhrid SackibThe Indian Constitution, adopted on 26 November 1949 and brought into force on 26 January 1950, is a transformative document marked by remarkable ambition. At the same time, it sought to remedy the harms of colonial exploitation, dismantle centuries old practice of caste system, create a unified national identity out of diverse cultural and linguistic communities, and secure meaningful set of fundamental rights for every citizen. Among those rights, the right to equality enshrined in Articles 14, 15, and 16 occupies a position of foundational importance. It is within this constitutional framework that residence-based reservation in higher education must be understood, examined and, where necessary, critically assessed. Higher education in India has long been regarded as a key means of social mobility, economic progress, and professional success. Admission to prestigious institutions such as medical colleges, engineering institutes, law schools, and central universities can transform not only the life of the student, but also that of the student’s family, community, and region from which the student belongs. It is because these stakes are so significant that questions regarding who is admitted, on what basis, and with what preferences have has given rise to some of the most politically sensitive and judicially contested debates in independent India.Item Computational Gatekeepers and Covert Targeting: Rethinking Safe Harbour, Data Protection and Competition Regulation in Indian E-Commerce(NLUJAA, 2026) Aditya DasThis research examines as to how these algorithmic decision-making systems function in e-commerce platforms and how these platforms had coded algorithms that have evolved beyond mere passive intermediaries to become active curators and market manipulators, challenging the foundational assumptions of safe harbour immunity. This research also studies the gaps in the Indian legislative and regulatory frameworks and shall identify the gaps from which such algorithmic processes escape meaningful evaluation despite their significant impact on market competition and consumer welfare. This research also proposes that a liability model should be put forth to monitor and distinguish between passive content hosting with that to active algorithmic curation and that the upcoming legislative amendments or regulations should incorporate algorithmic transparency mandates which will require the e-commerce operators to disclose ranking criteria, bias mitigation measures and automated or sponsored decision making criteria for systems that materially affect the market access or consumer choice by boosting ads that surely alter the final decision making process of the consumer. In recent years, the Competition Commission of India has flagged the algorithmic misuse, and to prevent that, governance in terms of algorithmic fairness is needed. This research draws attention to the much needed transparency of e-commerce platforms and suggests the incorporation of regulatory bodies that will serve as an effective regulatory tool to prevent anti-competitive practices.Item Beyond Physical Copies: Assessing the Applicability of the Doctrine of Exhaustion to NFTS and the Physical/Digital Dichotomy in Trademark and Copyright Law(NLUJAA, 2026) Aastha PattanayakThis dissertation has structural limitations as well as it primarily focuses on public, decentralised blockchain ecosystems (such as Ethereum) where on-chain proofs of alienation are cryptographically audible, meaning that private, permissioned ledgers fall outside its direct scope. Additionally, since the global legal landscape governing Web3 technologies is in a state of constant, volatile motion, several core legislative instruments analysed, such as the Digital India Act, are reviewed based on current draft white papers and emerging enforcement trends available up to 2026. Lastly, the research is limited by the technical realities of Link Rot and decentralised storage vulnerabilities, which limit the absolute stability of the underlying data outside the immediate blockchain ledger.