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Mrinalini Kochupillai

Mrinalini Kochupillai
Vetmeduni

PhD
Looking for a new Host Institution for my ERC Starting Grant

About

48
Publications
40,410
Reads
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445
Citations
Introduction
From 2020-2024, Mrinalini was a guest professor and core scientist at the Future Lab: Artificial Intelligence in Earth Observation at the Technical University of Munich. With over 18 years of experience on three continents, her teaching and research focus on ethics in emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain, and multi-disciplinary approaches to incentivizing sustainable innovations in agriculture and traditional knowledge systems.
Additional affiliations
October 2014 - August 2018
Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Position
  • Senior Research Fellow
May 2020 - April 2024
Technical University of Munich
Position
  • Associate Professor (Guest)

Publications

Publications (48)
Preprint
Full-text available
This contribution (forthcoming as a chapter in an edited volume with Cambridge University Press) critically considers how underlying assumptions in international IP treaties reflect, as well as impact upon, realities. International IP treaties, and more broadly, international agreements which set minimum standards and so harmonize and co-ordinate n...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In the EU, expert groups have done a great deal of work in compiling numerous “ethics guidelines ” for AI. However, recent academic research suggests that these guidelines are not practically useful for academic researchers. Making ethically mindful choices at very early stages of research can help reduce delays and expenses. It can also permit mor...
Chapter
Full-text available
The EU regulation on ‘Organic Production and Labelling of Organic Products’ opens the door for the creation of an EU-wide marketplace for agrobiodiversity contained in so-called “heterogeneous materials”. However, the creation of such a marketplace presupposes the existence of optimal demand and supply of agrobiodiversity, linked plant genetic sequ...
Article
Full-text available
Ethics is a central and growing concern in all applications utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI). Earth Observation (EO) or Remote Sensing (RS) research relies heavily on both Big Data and AI or Machine Learning (ML). While this reliance is not new, with increasing image resolutions and the growing number of EO/RS use-cases that have a direct imp...
Preprint
Full-text available
On World Health Day, 7th April 2021, the World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB) organized a global virtual conference titled Changing Paradigms in a Pandemic World: How to Regain Trust? Health Happiness and Ethics. The conference, which hosted 23 expert panels on specialized topics closely linked to the COVID Pandemic, witnessed active particip...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Geosciences, especially Earth Observation or Remote Sensing research, turn increasingly to Artificial Intelligence to manage the petabytes of data collected by an ever-increasing number of satellites. EO/RS are indeed heavily dependent on data, and scientists are on the hunt for more data, better data, and more representative and diverse data t...
Article
Earth observation (EO) is increasingly used for mapping and monitoring processes occurring at the surface of Earth. Data acquired by satellites nowadays allow us to have a global view, consistent in time, of the state of our forests, oceans, and growing urban areas. However, such a wealth of data has little value without appropriate processing chai...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Ethical issues in Earth Observation (EO) research have not received much attention in academic research thus far. However, they are becoming centrally relevant as a result of increasing satellite image resolution, the use of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning tools together with EO data, and an ever-expanding number of real-world use cases...
Preprint
Full-text available
Earth observation (EO) is a prime instrument for monitoring land and ocean processes, studying the dynamics at work, and taking the pulse of our planet. This article gives a bird's eye view of the essential scientific tools and approaches informing and supporting the transition from raw EO data to usable EO-based information. The promises, as well...
Article
As unconventional sources of geo-information, massive imagery and text messages from open platforms and social media form a temporally quasi-seamless, spatially multiperspective stream, but with unknown and diverse quality. Due to its complementarity to remote sensing data, geo-information from these sources offers promising perspectives, but harve...
Article
As unconventional sources of geoinformation, massive imagery and text messages from open platforms and social media form a temporally quasi-seamless, spatially multiperspective stream, but with unknown and diverse quality. Due to its complementarity to remote sensing (RS) data, geoinformation from these sources offers promising perspectives, but ha...
Preprint
Full-text available
As unconventional sources of geo-information, massive imagery and text messages from open platforms and social media form a temporally quasi-seamless, spatially multi-perspective stream, but with unknown and diverse quality. Due to its complementarity to remote sensing data, geo-information from these sources offers promising perspectives, but harv...
Chapter
Full-text available
During the past century, intellectual property (IP) law has expanded within and beyond national borders. The field of IP law was once a niche area concerning authors, inventors, and trademark owners. Today, IP law acts as a complex regime of instruments, institutions, and actors that negotiate overlapping, diverging, and occasionally competing publ...
Article
Full-text available
CONTEXT In the European Union (EU-27) and UK, animal farming generated annually more than 1.4 billion tonnes of manure during the period 2016–2019. Of this, more than 90% is directly re-applied to soils as organic fertiliser. Manure promotes plant growth, provides nutritious food to soil organisms, adds genetic and functional diversity to soils and...
Article
This article explores the use of blockchain for agrobiodiversity (B4A) with a specific focus on (i) providing an overview of the existing regulatory challenges that result in sub-optimal research and innovation with agrobiodiversity conserved in situ, (ii) investigating how a blockchain-based solution may help overcome these challenges, and (iii) i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The new EU Organic Regulations (EU 2018/848) on ‘Organic Production and Labelling of Organic Products’ (‘the Regulation’ or ‘the new EU Organic Regulation’) open the door for the creation of an EU wide marketplace for agrobiodiversity contained in so called “heterogenous materials”. However, the creation of such a marketplace for agrobiodiversity,...
Article
Full-text available
Dilemma situations involving the choice of which human life to save in the case of unavoidable accidents are expected to arise only rarely in the context of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Nonetheless, the scientific community has devoted significant attention to finding appropriate and (socially) acceptable automated decisions in the event that AVs or...
Preprint
Full-text available
(This article summarizes and adds some new details and explanations to the Position Paper submitted to the Government of India on means of promoting sustainable seed innovation. The full (original) text of the Position Paper is also available on Research Gate. Comments are welcome on this article version as well as on the original Position Paper, t...
Research
Full-text available
This is a multi-disciplinary research based position paper being prepared for Government of India on means of promoting sustainable seed innovations, i.e., promoting research and in situ innovations with agrobiodiversity by all stakeholders, especially small farmers, with the aim of enhancing their income, supporting the cause of conservation and s...
Preprint
Full-text available
Data is increasingly considered a tradeable commodity, the transfer/sharing of which needs to be regulated to facilitate its beneficial use in various emerging technological applications, the most prominent of which are AI/machine learning applications. With growing economic & political relevance of data, several major ethical issues linked to its...
Preprint
Full-text available
This (working) paper offers a novel perspective with which the concepts of 'value', (proof-of-)'work' and 'mining' linked to blockchain technology, together with its immutable, time-stamped record keeping feature, can be understood and used to: (i) incentivize research, development and innovation into areas crucially relevant for environmental heal...
Preprint
Full-text available
The scope and content of an ‘Ethics of Spatiality’ embraces concepts as divergent as human connection, sincerity and bonding on one hand, and the necessity to ensure ‘separation and individuation’, on the other. It can therefore be used as a framework to engage with various, and often seemingly divergent, human rights and values that are closely as...
Chapter
Full-text available
The intention of this chapter is to formulate thought-provoking ideas about legitimacy and close neighbour terms. In particular, the chapter considers 'legitimacy' to not only be a very relevant term for business ethics in general, but also highly relevant in answering the question of how business ethics relates to law. Rather than defining legitim...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In a market of free knowledge, knowledge has all the characteristics of a public good. This may lead to a ‘free-rider’ problem, resulting in market-failure in the form of sub-optimal (incentives for) creation of knowledge in the form, for example, of artistic works and inventive activity. While exclusive rights regimes such as those incorporated in...
Article
Abstract: Intellectual property (IP) protection regimes aim to avoid market failures associated with public goods and free riding on the one hand, and those associated with over protection on the other. This article revisits the market failure theory in the context of plant variety protection (PVP) regimes, with specific reference to the Indian re...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter discusses the findings from the qualitative and quantitative research conducted among farmers, private sector seed industry representatives, and scientists at government research institutes. Section 5.1 discusses the results from the qualitative and quantitative interviews and surveys conducted among the private sector and public secto...
Chapter
This chapter compiles the findings and suggestions from the previous chapter and recommends means of promoting ‘sustainable innovations’ in plant varieties. It argues, inter alia, that it is up to each country to take advantage of the flexibilities inherent in the current wording of Article 27.3(b), ensure that these flexibilities are not done away...
Chapter
This chapter studies the objectives underlying the enactment of the Indian Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001 (PPV&FR Act) and seeks to determine whether these objectives are in harmony with the ideal of promoting sustainable innovation in plant varieties, as discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2 . It further examines whether specifi...
Chapter
This chapter provides an overview of key international legal instruments associated with protection of plant varieties (TRIPs, UPOV, ITPGRFA and CBD). It highlights the current debate in the international arena relating to plant varieties and why it falls short of addressing a key concern, namely, finding means of promoting ‘sustainable innovations...
Chapter
This chapter studies the evolution of seed related innovations from four lenses—a historical lens, a scientific/technological lens, and an ecological/‘sustainability of innovation’ lens, and an economic lens. It finds that seed related innovations and improvement and the development of allied sciences, has, over the years, shifted away from being p...
Chapter
This chapter takes another look at Schumpeter’s theory and definition of innovation and its relationship with modern intellectual property laws. It finds that intellectual property protection regimes have historically been ‘value-neutral’ in their approach. Accordingly, they protect all innovations notwithstanding the negative externalities that mi...
Chapter
This chapter introduces the philosophical foundations on which the work presented in this book is based. It starts with tracing the roots of Schumpeter’s famous concept of ‘Creative Destruction’, to the image of the ‘Dancing Shiva’ (Nataraj) (a prominent God in Eastern mythology, a symbol of destruction, transformation and evolution) through the wr...
Book
This book develops the term ‘Sustainable Innovations’ and defines it on the basis of plant variety innovations that, by their very nature, (i) permit the in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity and genetic variability in diverse geographic and climatic conditions, (ii) do not exclude any potential innovators from the process of innovation, and the...
Research
Full-text available
A summary and comment on the 'Parental Lines Case' decided by the Plant Variety Authority of India.
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the objectives of the PPV&FR Act in the light of history and current state of Indian agriculture, drawing comparisons with approaches adopted by developed countries and/or the international community in the early days of plant variety protection where relevant. The analysis has been done with a view to determining the problems f...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the objectives and functioning of the Plant Variety Protection and Farmers Rights Act, 2001 (PPV&FR Act) in the light of the history and current state of Indian agriculture and available plant variety registration statistics. The analysis first studies the problems faced by Indian agriculture that the law seeks to resolve. It th...
Article
Full-text available
The article critically reviews the stated objectives and provisions of the proposed Indian Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill, 2008. It seeks to determining the impact the Bill, if enacted, might have on the innovation environment in India and comes to the conclusion that the Bill may be premature in the current...
Article
Availability of seed, venture capital and bank finance for start ups and SMEs is one of the key factors determining the strength of the innovation system in any country. As India gears up to pass the Protection and Utilization of Public Funded IP Bill, it needs to closely study the availability of such capital to its start ups and SMEs. This articl...
Article
Full-text available
The report first studies the current innovation environment in India by looking at the state of its economy, education system, legal system (including an analysis of the Indian Patents Act, 1970 as applicable to the current study), availability of venture/seed capital and R&D output (number of patents, publications etc. coming out of its key resear...
Article
Full-text available
India's amendment to her patent regime in 2005 to introduce pharmaceutical product patents attracted unprecedented attention, both domestically and globally. While multinational pharmaceutical companies were concerned that the Act withered away their exclusive rights, civil society activists decried the new product patent regime, fearing that it wo...
Article
Full-text available
India's amendment to her patent regime in 2005' to introduce pharmaceutical product patents attracted unprecedented attention, both domestically and globally. While multinational pharmaceutical companies were concerned that the Act withered away their exclusive rights, civil society activists decried the new product patent regime, fearing that it w...
Article
Full-text available
This report is a descriptive one that explores the system of ‘compulsory licensing’ in India. In particular, it examines the history/background/rationale of the present ‘compulsory licensing regime’ in India. It then outlines the scope of the ‘compulsory licensing’ regime as it stands today. In particular, it deals with the grounds for compulsory l...

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