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SpicyIP Weekly Review (May 18 – May 24)

/ By / Copyright, Others, Patent, Trademark

Entering the last week of May with a post tracing Indian copyright doctrine and what exactly does it protect. Post on the Delhi HC’s ruling in Bansal v. Philips, a consequential SEP/FRAND decision. And a post on the expanding and increasingly amorphous scope of personality rights in India, most recently in the case of Aniruddhacharya Ji Maharaj. Case summaries and IP developments from the country and the globe and much more in this week’s SpicyIP Weekly Review. Anything we are […]

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In the Aftermath of Parle: Unsettling Questions for Trade Mark Law

/ By / Trademark

What happens when trademark law privileges filing priority over marketplace reality? The Delhi High Court’s April 10 ruling in the ‘20-20’ dispute raises difficult questions about whether registration can meaningfully coexist with decade-old goodwill, and whether identical marks can survive in the market outside the framework of honest and concurrent use. In this post, Eleen Garg examines the structural tensions the decision leaves unresolved between registry formalism, consumer protection, and passing off. Eleen is a lawyer and is practicing before

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Defragmenting the “Work” : A Critique of Ivy Entertainment’s “Hook” Injunction

/ By / Copyright, Innovation

On 15 May 2026, a Single Judge of the Delhi High Court passed an ex parte ad-interim order in Ivy Entertainment v. Rahul Singh restraining the defendants from making any use of one line of lyric, jaane meri janeman bachpan ka pyar bhool nahi jaana re, on the footing that this fragment is the “distinctive hook line” of a song in which the plaintiff, an acquisition vehicle that purchased a portfolio of 1,250 songs in November 2025, claims copyright. The

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What’s in a Name? The Quintessential Misnomers That Are Untested SEPs: Thoughts on the Division Bench Judgment in Bansal v. Philips

/ By / Patent

The Delhi High Court’s recent Division Bench ruling in Bansal v. Philips Division Bench Judgment may well become one of the most consequential SEP/FRAND decisions in India so far. In an incisive post, methodically breaking down the Division Bench decision, Aniruddh Bhatia explains in detail the decision as it deals with essentiality, infringement, FRAND dance, calculation of damages, confidentiality clubs and exhaustion. Aniruddh Bhatia is an advocate at an IP-focused law firm with eight years of litigation experience, six of

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A Personality Too Spiritual for Satire?

/ By / Copyright, Others, Overlaps in IP, Privacy, Trademark

I had underestimated how much of the personality rights space in India is one big, vague, wild west! The personality rights order passed by the Delhi High Court in favour of the plaintiff, Anil Kumar Tiwari (aka Aniruddhacharya Ji Maharaj) shows what happens when an already confusing jurisprudence continues to develop without guardrails: IP law protections are claimed for ineligible content; social commentary based on meme-culture collides with ambiguous private rights; and, doctrinal confusion continues to blur the scope of

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Ready, Set, Enclose? India’s Sports-IP Waiver and the Problem of Turning Play into Property

/ By / Overlaps in IP

The Government’s new fee waiver for “sports-related” IP registrations appears, at first glance, to be straightforward. But beneath the news lies a deeper question: what exactly is “Sports IP,” and what kinds of ownership, exclusivity, and control is the State choosing to subsidise through this policy? Aryan Agrawal argues that the waiver is significant not just as an innovation measure but as part of a broader movement toward the enclosure of sporting culture, fandom, and access. Aryan is a final-year

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From Blueprints to Bistro: Rethinking Culinary Creativity After Cryogas

/ By / Copyright, Design, Overlaps in IP

What happens when creativity is both functional and aesthetic at the same time? The Supreme Court’s decision in Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd., though rooted in industrial design law, raises a larger question about forms of expression that do not fit neatly within existing IP categories. Nidhi Jaiswal uses culinary plating as a lens to explore how copyright and design law may leave certain kinds of creative labour structurally under-protected. Nidhi is an LL.M. candidate at Rajiv

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Can the Indian Copyright Act Accommodate Fully Autonomous AI Generated Output?

/ By / Copyright

As the Delhi High Court directs the Registrar of Copyright to consider Stephen Thaler’s bid to register a fully AI-generated artwork under Indian copyright law, a deeper question emerges: was the Copyright Act ever designed to recognise non-human authorship at all? In light of this development, Rashi Singhal argues that the architecture, rationale, and core provisions of the Act remain fundamentally human-centric, making fully autonomous AI authorship difficult to accommodate within the existing framework. Rashi is a Graduate Research Fellow at

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (May 11 – May 17)

/ By / Others

With great sorrow we share the news of the passing of Mr. Nataraj G, founder of LCGN Advocates – a post on his life and work. Marking Prof. Shamnad Basheer’s 50th birthday, a post revisiting his last recorded interview and also announcing three new initiatives! A post on the continuing Section 3(k) saga, Yogesh Byadwal writes on the frameworks within which the Courts are working while deciding objections u/s. 3(k). Case summaries and IP developments from the country and the

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Breaking: Breakthrough for India’s SEP Jurisprudence in new Philips v. Rajesh Bansal ruling!

/ By / Patent

DVDs are long gone from our markets, yet their SEPs continue to be on pause, play, rewind! A momentous decision has been delivered by the Delhi High Court today – a big, refreshing and important update for the developing standard essential patent (SEP) jurisprudence. The division bench decision comes from Justices Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla and is a turning point in the decade long SEP litigation between Philips and Rajesh Bansal. The case was among the initial SEP

Breaking: Breakthrough for India’s SEP Jurisprudence in new Philips v. Rajesh Bansal ruling! Read More »

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