2013

Locus standi and public interest under the GI Act – Analysing GI Registry Order in ‘Darjeeling Tea’ rectification application

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[*Long post]   We reported that a rectification application had been filed under Section 27 of Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 (“GI Act”) for removal of ‘Darjeeling Tea’ GI.  The Assistant Registrar vide Order dated 28.09.2012 (“Darjeeling TeaOrder”) rejected the application inter alia on the ground of absence of locus standi. I shall argue that the Darjeeling Tea Order is legally incorrect vis-à-vis the ground of locus standi. I shall analyse other issues in a later […]

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Spicy IP Weekly Review: January Weeks 2-3

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Image from here This week, we come to the readers with the review slightly late and will be covering all the posts in the past 2 weeks since the January Week 1 Review by Sai Vinod. Given the higher number of blog posts to reminisce about, this weekly review won’t have a separate section referring to the global IP happenings this week. It all started with Mathews carrying a detailed and incisive post in 2 parts (here and here) introducing

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meme text: If i download a movie in jamaica, am i a pirate of the carribean

Pirates of the Carribean: Retaliating Against IP

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As expected, the WTO recently authorised Antigua, a tiny Carribean island, to “cross retaliate” against intellectual property belonging to the United States.  What this effectively means is that Antigua qualifies as a “legal” pirate of the Carribean i.e. it can pirate music and movies belonging to US copyright holders, without violating any international norm. (I deliberately use the term “legal” pirate, if only to evoke a strong paradox).”… As the US threatened Antigua with dire consequences for this purported “IP

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Delhi High Court clarifies the notification re patent agent examination

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In a previous post, we had mentioned that the DIPP had notified the changes in the patent agent examination that prescribed a lower weightage to viva than the written examination.  Based on this notification, candidates like Renu Rampal (post) could have applied to become patent agents.  However, the patent office faced a few practical difficulties in implementing the decision of the Delhi High Court (DHC).   The practical difficulty was that if the notification was applied retrospectively, a few candidates (~20) who had passed

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Two years of continuing disappointment with the Madras High Court

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Image from here It has been exactly two years since the Madras High Court admitted two PILs challenging the constitutionality of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) and the Copyright Board; the first filed by Shamnad and the second by the South Indian Music Companies Association (SIMCA).  While the petition against the Copyright Board was rendered infructuous when Parliament amended the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957 last year, the petition challenging the constitutionality of the IPAB is very much

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Announcing the SpicyIP Fellows for 2013 – 2014!

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After a great response to our call for applications for our first SpicyIP Fellowship, we are pleased to announce the selected Fellows for 2013 – 2014. We’d like to thank all those who participated in the Fellowship application process and especially those who continued to send in multiple entries based on the feedback from previous submissions. We received about 40 submissions during the 6 week period from December 14th – January 25th. Of these, 18 were selected as guest posts

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Guest Post: Looking at IPR Policy in Climate change action

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To wrap up our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series*, we bring you a final post by Anubha Sinha. In this post, she discusses the urgent need to involve and adapt our IPR policy to better address the fight against climate change.  *Note: We are yet to review a few posts by authors that have fallen short of the three posts required for the fellowship. These will be reviewed and published in our normal guest series in the coming week.  Climate Change

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Part I: Is decompilation of software legal under the Indian Copyright Act

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In discussions with a few of my colleagues in software development related to mobile applications for Android, Windows, and iOS platforms, a question arose whether studying an existing application (already developed and available for a device) and using the existing application as a study tool is legal under the Indian Copyright Act?  At first glance the relevant provision (Section 52) under the Indian Copyright Act prescribes that studying software is legal.     However, there are many practical issues that

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Part II: Is decompilation of software legal under the Indian Copyright Act

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The previous post discussed the development of the US and European laws as applicable to reverse engineering.  This post compares the Indian provisions with the European and US counterpart legislation.   One important aspect is the growing number of application developers in India for the Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows platforms.    Usually application developers do not start development of applications from scratch.  A mish-mash of existing and new code is used.  For example, all four of the platforms discussed above provide

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Correction: Meerut scissors GI still in application phase.

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Recently we had a guest post stating that Meerut scissors had in fact been granted GI status. After cross checking a comment we received from Shailendra, we would like to note that we made an error with this post and it is in fact still in the ‘new application’ status. According to the author of that post, the following reports led to the confusion:  The Hindu states:  “For the first time, a handmade tool from micro and small and medium

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