October 2012

Guest Post: Bayer-Natco decision TRIPS Compliant?

/ By / Uncategorized

The Bayer-Natco decision broke ground as the first compulsory license earlier this year, and last month Bayer’s appeal was dismissed by the IPAB. Dr Enrico Bonadio sent us a commentary he published in the current issue of the European Intellectual Property Review, questioning the TRIPs compliancy of the ruling. Dr Bonadio is a lecturer of IP and EU law at The City Law School University, London and was practicing as an IP attorney in top tier international firms for several years. His […]

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Guest Post: ‘Xerox’ is not Generic…….Yet?!

/ By / Trademark

As we had mentioned in passing a few weeks ago, Xerox Corporation scored a major victory before the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) which dismissed several petitions by a Chennai based photocopy shop to declare the ‘Xerox’ trademark a generic mark thereby disqualifying it for trademark protection. Given the sheer volume of evidence presented by the petitioner, the judgment of the IPAB was a hard fought victory for Xerox and its lawyer, Shwestasree Majumdar. The judgment can be read over

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Spicy IP Weekly Review (October Week 2)

/ By / Others

This week (October 8-14) has seen quite a few happenings in the IP scenario in and out of the country and as many as 12 posts in the blog.   IPAB Appointment Controversy It started with Prashant covering the Delhi High Court judgment of Sanjeev Kumar Chaswal v. Union of India, which dealt with the controversies surrounding the IPAB appointments. In this matter, which was primarily about the suitability of candidature of Mr. Chaswal, the court had ruled against the

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Roche vs Cipla: A Patent Disappointment?

/ By / Patent

Given that the recent Roche vs Cipla decision was effectively India’s first post trial pharma patent ruling in a post TRIPS world, one might be forgiven for expecting a lot. Sadly, it disappointed…on several fronts. As I’d noted in an earlier post, the ruling suffers from serious jurisprudential flaws, with the Delhi High court effectively conflating issues of validity and infringement. A Mint article by CH Unnikrishnan encapsulates my views as below: “While many of us are happy about the

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Ever participated in a clinical trial? Perhaps.

/ By / Drug Regulation, Patent

The Supreme Court recently came down very heavily on the government about the lack of transparency in the manner in which clinical trials are conducted in our country. These observations were made during the hearing of a PIL (which the Supreme Court seems to be entertaining in increasing numbers!) filed by an NGO from Madhya Pradesh. For the section of our readers unfamiliar with what clinical trials are and how they work, clinical trials are a part of the R&D

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An anonymous comment in response to the DU Campaign against copyright law & publishers

/ By / Copyright

In response to the guest post by Chandana Anusha on the DU event – Who’s afraid of Copyright?, we received what has to be one of the most insightful comments that we ever received on the blog, so much so that it deserves to be published as an independent post on this blog. Unfortunately, the author of the comment has chosen to be anonymous and I’ve been unable to track him or her down despite my best guesses. In any

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A test case for India’s new safe harbour provision: AGS Entertainment v. 37 ISPs

/ By / Copyright

In the first of its kind case, after the enactment of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 the Madras High Court has passed an interim injunction against 37 Internet Service Providers in a qua-timet action by the producers of “Maattrraan/Brothers”, a Tamil movie starring Surya playing the role of conjoined twins. The plaintiff-producers were represented by A.A. Mohan and Associates.  A qua-timet action, is typically filed even before the infringement has taken place, on the apprehension that such infringement is going

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Karnataka High Court quashes Controller General’s order barring ‘Overseas Indian Citizen’ from practising as patent agent

/ By / Uncategorized

In an order dated the 25th of September, 2012 the High Court of Karnataka, situated at Bangalore passed a writ quashing an order of the Controller General of Patents, dated 22nd of February, 2012 which had ordered the removal of an erstwhile patent agent – Naren Thappeta from the Register of Patents, thereby barring him from practising as a patent agent under the Patents Act, 1970. The order can be accessed over here.  The petitioner was an Indian citizen at

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The perils of selective journalism

/ By / Innovation

Image from here Around two weeks ago, I received an email from Srinivas Rao, editor of Bio-Spectrum, asking me for permission to use some of the information that I had unearthed from CSIR using the RTI Act, 2005. The two specific posts that he wanted to refer to are: “CSIR finally discloses details of patent licensing: More than 400 patents licensed over last ten years” and “CSIR provides misleading information; aims to hide revenues from patent licensing”.  I obviously thought

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Defensive Patent Licensing: A way out of the Patent Quagmire?

/ By / Patent

[Warning: Long post that mostly reviews a paper describing a type of license which may reduce unnecessary patent litigation as well as promote an ‘open access’ approach. Actual review starts from below the dotted line. ] Who would’ve thought patent-wars could have become a topic of discussion amongst even those with traditionally no interest in ‘lawyery stuff’! Good or bad, one side effect that the Apple-Samsung fiasco has had, has been to turn the public’s attention span towards the topic

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