2013’s Hard Hitting IP Developments – Input Requested

IP developments in India have found themselves on a growing stage over the last few years. From being an area that only niche IP professionals concerned themselves with, IP in India is now slowly finding itself a more regular part of mainstream news. However, there is still much left to be desired in terms of coverage and analysis of these developments. Even on the blog, though we do try our best to put forth this coverage and analysis, we find that the blog format isn’t always conducive to putting across the in-depth review that certain high-impact developments require. In light of this, the SpicyIP team would like to put together a comprehensive report on the most hard hitting IP developments in the last year (2013).

We want to analyze how these IP developments came about, what their impacts were and what effects they may have had for the IP world. In narrowing down the top IP developments for this report, we’ve put together a tentative list of cases and events that we believe are notable either due to their jurisprudential value or for the impact they’ve had or are likely to have on the IP eco-system (including stakeholders / stakeholder reactions).

Here is where we’d like our readers to step in. We would like to request our readers to please go through the list we’ve compiled below and let us know your comments – whether you think there is a development you think we should add to the list, or whether you’d like to oppose the inclusion of a development that you think ought not to be in this report, or whether you’d just like to leave a comment for us. Please keep in mind that we’re only considering developments that have reached some kind of conclusion in the 2013 calendar year.

Based on comments and suggestions from our readers, we should have a comprehensive list containing all the notable Indian IP developments that occurred in 2013. In case this list is more than our team can cover, we will put this list back out to our readers for a poll to finalize the list. Without further ado, please find our tentative list as below! For quick reference, I’ve entered some keywords/phrases indicating the reason the developments below have found themselves on our list so far.

Cases:

1. Novartis AG v. Union of India & Others – Section 3(d)
2. Bayer v. Natco – Compulsory License
3. Bristol Myers Squibb v. Bhutada – Quia Timet Actions
4.1 Aachi Masala v. S.D. Murali & Registrar of Trademarks & 4.2 Shreedhar Milk Foods v. Vikas Tyagi & Registrar of Trademarks – IPAB’s power of review
5. Akuate v. Star – Hot News Doctrine
6. Satnam Overseas v. Sant Ram – Kohinoor Trademark
7. BDR v. BMS – Dasatinib CL rejection
8. (Mohan Lal v. Sona Paint) + (Micolube v. Rakesh Kumar) – Overlapping rights
9. Nitto Denko v. Union of India – IPO backlog and processing
10. Merck v. Aprica – Conflicting decisions (Januvia)
11. Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds v. Union of India – 1st case on protection of plant varieties
12 Indian Heritage Society v. Meher Malhotra – IP and diplomatic immunity

Events:

1. Draft guidelines on Computer Related Inventions
2. Guidelines for Examination of Biotechnology Application for Patents
3. DIPP refuses CL plea for Herceptin

We’re counting on our readers to make sure we end up with a comprehensive list and report, so please start letting us know your thoughts! Please try to send in all your comments by April 4th.