SpicyIP

The Inventor is still Human: Indian Patent Office’s DABUS Refusal

April 21, 2026 / By Ambika Aggarwal / Innovation, Patent

In keeping with a broad global trend, the Indian Patent Office has refused Dr. Stephen Thaler’s patent application which sought to recognise Dr. Thaler’s AI system DABUS as the inventor of a ‘food container and devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention’. The Indian patent office’s decision goes a step beyond the refusals issued by other jurisdictions and discusses, along with inventorship, the question of patentability of the claimed invention. The refusal of the Indian Patent Office is a part […]

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AIR-1, Right of Publicity-0: Delhi HC’s CLATastrophic Mix-Up

April 20, 2026 / By Kartik Sharma / Others, Trademark

This post is co-authored with Dr. Aakanksha Kumar. Dr. Aakanksha Kumar (She/Her) is an independent researcher and academic who also consults with content creators and advises Chhattisgarhi music artists on copyright-related matters. Previously, she served as Associate Professor, Associate Dean, and Associate Director of the Centre for Post Graduate Legal Studies (CPGLS) at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS). Since 2019, she has designed and taught a self-created elective course across law schools titled Comparative Celebrity Laws: Personality, Publicity and Free

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (April 13 – April 19)

April 20, 2026 / By Md Sabeeh Ahmad / Copyright, Others, Patent, Trademark

Entering the second half of April with a post on the ANI v OpenAI, judgment of which has been reserved by the Delhi HC. Can an entity that is no longer a registered copyright society continue to demand licensing fees? Post on PPL’s ongoing litigation. Another post on the Delhi HC holding that removing an original mark and replacing it with one’s own does not automatically amount to trademark infringement. Case summaries and IP developments from the country and the

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Repair, Remove, Replace: DHC saves the Repair Industry

April 19, 2026 / By Yogesh Byadwal / Trademark

The question of whether a refurbisher, after repairing a product, can remove the affixed mark and replace it with his own has generated a lot of discussion on this blog. Last year, in a post, I had showed how the Delhi HC went from initially injuncting further sale of repaired goods u/s. 30(4) to allowing such sale as long as it was accompanied with disclosure on warranty. This, I argued, showed the Court’s softening stance towards refurbishers i.e. sale of repaired goods was

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ANI v OpenAI: Not Everything an LLM Does is Copyright Infringement

April 15, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Copyright

With judgment now reserved in ANI v OpenAI, India stands at the cusp of what might be its first major judicial reckoning with the copyright implications of generative AI. The case raises foundational questions on whether AI systems merely process information in new ways or unlawfully appropriate protected expression. Vishno Sudheendra examines two of the most contested issues from the final hearings: chatbot web search functionality and memorization. Vishno is a fourth-year B.A., LL.B (Hons) student at the National Law

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DHC Stunts the Growth of Dynamic Injunctions, Demands the Legislature to Step In

April 15, 2026 / By Tejaswini Kaushal / Trademark

On 16 March 2026, a single bench (SB) of the Delhi High Court (DHC), in Mahindra and Mahindra Limited v. Diksha Sharma, provided a decisive inflection point in the evolution of dynamic injunction jurisprudence in India. The case started from a fairly typical trademark dispute involving the misuse of the “MAHINDRA” mark by packers and movers operating deceptively similar domain names as MAHINDRA AND MAHINDRA. Yet, the Court’s categorical refusal to sustain the dynamic injunction framework that extends the remedies

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From Delhi to Bombay, Music Licensing Goes Off the Beat

April 13, 2026 / By Ambika Aggarwal / Copyright

A lot has been happening with the repertoire of sound recordings that Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) claims to own and manage. It is being used in saree showrooms, a group of 94 restaurants, high profile pubs and bars, restaurants and more. Against all these places, PPL has asserted an infringement of copyright for playing music without obtaining licenses. This has created a bizarre mix of situations. Whether PPL can exercise any legal capacity to collect licensing fees, after having surrendered

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SpicyIP Bells & Whistles: IP Events and Opportunities (13.04.2026)

April 13, 2026 / By Gaurangi Kapoor / Courses & Workshops, Opportunities

Welcome back to another week of Bells & Whistles. As always, we’ve rounded up a mix of developments, opportunities, and thoughtful reads from across the IP world along with a Bell of the Week that’s well worth revisiting. Bell of the Week: Médecins Sans Frontières Some bells do not just chime, they insist. This week’s bell is for Médecins Sans Frontières, an organisation that has long worked at the frontlines of healthcare, often in places where access is limited and urgency

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (April 6 – April 12)

Entering the second week of April announcing the faculty line up for the SpicyIP Summer School 2026! Two-part post on the purpose of copyright in academic work in the context of Sci-Hub litigation. Another post discussing whether trademark law can be used to reclaim what design law has deliberately released into the public domain? Case summaries and IP developments from the country and the globe and much more in this week’s SpicyIP Weekly Review. Anything we are missing out on?

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(Part II) Right Without Duty: Academic Copyright, the Publisher’s Juridical Fiction, and the Case for an Ex Ante Reading of Section 52

Continuing the discussion on the Scihub litigation, in Part II of their post, Rishabh Upadhyay and Pragati Upadhyay turn to the August 2025 order as a vantage point to examine what the litigation has, so far, failed to do. They argue that the procedural exclusion of intervenors and the Court’s reliance on contempt have sidelined the core question of academic access under Section 52. Building on this, they make the case for reimagining fair dealing as an ex ante right

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