December 2013

The Sholay saga continues- this time on 3D production

/ By / Copyright

The Bombay High Court on the 1st of April, 2013 refused to grant a stay on the 3-D production of Sholay. (Shouvik’s post on this can be found here.) An appeal to this order was filed by Ramesh Sippy and the appeal was dismissed by the two judge bench of the Bombay High Court. Ramesh Sippy’s claim was that he was owner of the rights in Sholay and therefore, SMEPL’s (Sholay Media and Entertainment Private Limited) license to PIPL and […]

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SC upholds Concurrent Use of ‘Kohinoor’ rice by Rival Proprietor in the State of Uttar Pradesh

/ By / Trademark

Satnam Overseas v. Sant Ram and Co & Ors. [Civil Appeal No. 10528 Of 2013] The dispute was regarding the territorial use of the trademark ‘Kohinoor’ on rice. The SC dismissed the appeal by Satnam Overseas( Indian rice exporter major) to restrict its rival Sant Ram’s use of the trademark Kohinoor to only six cities in Uttar Pradesh(UP), because that would create a lot of complications and litigation as to the exact boundary of a particular or district. The Court

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Breaking News: IRRO Registration Refused!

/ By / Copyright

In a momentous development, the Government of India refused to re-register IRRO, a collecting society formed for the purpose of licensing books and other literary works. An official at the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) informed SpicyIP that the governmental order refusing registration was issued on the 5th of December for various reasons including the failure by IRRO to comply with the latest copyright rules mandating a general body meeting and election of members of governing council etc. Some

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Consilience 2013-2014 at NLSIU, Bangalore

/ By / Uncategorized

Early last month, Shouvik blogged the call for papers of Consilience, 2013-2014 organized by the Law and Technology Committee of NLSIU, Bangalore.  Please read below for the details of the conference and registration. The Law and Technology Society of National Law School of India University, Bangalore is organizing the 6th edition of its flagship Conference ‘Consilience’ on 14th and 15th December, 2013 (Saturday and Sunday) on the theme of ‘Legal Issues pertaining to Cloud Computing’ at NLSIU Campus, Bangalore. The Conference will see some of the best lawyers, jurists and industry leaders

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The challenge by Bhojpuri musicians to the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012

/ By / Copyright

In the last few months we have covered several petitions challenging the constitutionality of the different provisions of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012. The previous posts covered the challenges made by film producers (Bharat Anand & Sir J.V.M. Movies Ltd.), music labels (T-Series, Venus & PPL) and book publishers (IRRO). The last in this series of posts is the pending case of Devender Dev v. Union of India, filed before the Delhi High Court in May this year. This particular

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CERN undertakes largest ever Open Access Initiative

/ By / Copyright

Come January 2014, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), through its SCOAP3 project will make a significant portion of scientific literature in the particle physics field available for anyone with an internet connection under Open Access terms. According to SCOAP3, which stands for Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, “SCOAP3 is a one-of-its-kind partnership of thousands of libraries and key funding agencies and research centers in two dozen countries. Working with leading publishers, SCOAP3 is converting key journals in the field of High-Energy

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Searching for FRAND in FRAND valuations – Part 1/3

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

The year 2013 has been a watershed year for standard essential patent (“SEP”) owners and related fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) valuations.  This year has seen a consensus build upon the unavailability of injunctive relief to FRAND-encumbered patent holders.  At least a few cases saw common ground built up on the methodology for calculating a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) royalty rate and a royalty base.  This year also saw the takeover of Nokia’s devices and services business by Microsoft. 

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generic pic of RTI

Five new Central Information Commissioners appointed

/ By / Others

Transparency has been a consistent area of focus for this blog and to this end, we’ve certainly tried to make much use of the RTI mechanism. As Shamnad has previously noted, “From 2007 when we first shot off a protest petition (signed by many of you) to the Prime Ministers’ Office asking that patent data be available for public access, up until our RTI investigations into the authorship of the controversial section 3(d), we’ve come a long way. However, much more needs to be

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Weekly Review (4th Week of November)

/ By / Others

We started this week with my post on the ruling of the United States District Court of New York that the Google Books Library Project was permissible fair use. Under the Google Books Library project, Google has scanned more than twenty million library books in their entirety from libraries such as the  New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and a number of other university libraries. Google did not obtain or seek permission from the copyright holders prior to

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Guest post: Copyright in Photographs vis-a-vis Social Networking Sites

/ By / Copyright

We are happy to present Devika Agarwal’s second post in the 2nd Annual SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series. You can view her previous post on copyrightability of characters here. [Edit: Incidentally, Gopika had discussed this development during its initial stages earlier last year in the course of her application to our fellowship.] Copyright in Photographs vis-a-vis Social Networking Sites We live in the ripe age of digital photography where anybody with a point-to-shoot camera is easily a photographer; the unprecedented spurt

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