The last week did not see much action in the field of intellectual property rights in India. A quick recapitulation follows:
In the beginning of the week, Swaraj had analysed the GIPC International IP Index 2014 (published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Centre). He concluded that the much touted GIPC IP Index is erroneous inasmuch as it is biased and employs flawed research methodology. He also points out that problematically, it is likely that this report will be given undue credibility. On a related note, KEI has uploaded 7 hours of video from the Feb 12-14th USITC hearings, where the report was mentioned a few times.
We also had Thomas analyse the AFTI’s Report for the USTR’s Special 301 Investigation. In its report, the AFT has recommended that India be listed as a PFC in the investigation. Often a classification as a PFC country can lead to the imposition of trade sanctions. On analysis however, Thomas concludes that there is a lot that the report has viewed rather myopically and points out that this is yet another disturbing addition to a rather troubling pattern that is building up.
Moving on, recently, PepsiCo sent a legal notice to the producers of the upcoming movie ‘Youngistan’ alleging copyright infringement of its tagline ‘Yeh Hai Youngistan Meri Jaan.’ Mathews had taken up this issue arguing that according to the de minimis principle, it seems unlikely that PepsiCo will succeed in its claim of copyright infringement against ‘Youngistan’ and that it is more a case of literal fragmented similarity.
We also learnt that a separate copyright office and a permanent copyright Board are being set up to provide better services to authors, performers and creators of various works. According to HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju, the objective behind this move is to eliminate wasteful expenditure and help copyright owners save time and energy on long travels to come to copyright office to search the copyright register.
International news:
In the international arena, some very interesting developments took place:
Following a meeting in the Ministry of External Affairs, it appears the Indian government, in the light of the unilateral actions being taken at the USITC and USTR, has turned down the USITC’s request to meet with government officials. Instead, the government has indicated that it will pursue IPR related issues only at the multilateral level, i.e., at the WTO.
(On a related note, we will be following the USTR 301 process closely on SpicyIP. You can see our previous posts on it here.)
Last week, the Obama Administration announced “major progress on a series of initiatives designed to combat patent trolls and further strengthen our patent system and foster innovation.” The White House also announced delivery on its commitment of “Promoting Transparency” concerning patent ownership. (The White House Fact Sheet on Patent Reform may be accessed here.)
In an interesting post, Susan Chalmers (Consultant, Internet Policy) has analysed why the provision titled ‘Domain names and the Internet’ [which would have the effect of establishing uniform standards for a group country-code Top-Level Domain managers (“ccTLDs”)] should not be included in TPP.
And this ends our review for this week. To ensure that you do not miss any of the spicy developments in the field of IP, subscribe to SpicyIP by clicking here.
