The SpicyIP Story of the Week is a guest post by Nehaa Chaudhari on the Karnataka Goondas Act which seeks to bring within its ambit ‘digital offenders’ and ‘audio or video pirates’. She points out several problems with this development, such as the introduction of Preventive Detention, impact on freedom of speech, and the broad scope of the offences mentioned in the Act.
The week began with Rajiv’s post on a lawsuit filed by Vringo against ZTE, Indiamart and Indiamesh alleging infringement of a patent related to making a handover decision in a mobile communication system. The Court ruled in favour of ZTE. Rajiv analysed the decision and concluded that the decision “provides the standard for a person to be an expert in the field at issue. It also provides the framework for adequately determining balance of convenience in patent cases. Procedurally, it provides the relevant guidelines for what could be included in a rejoinder. Finally, it underscores the importance of an expert and appropriate usage thereof in patent matters.”
Shamnad then asked for our readers’ feedback on a Report on IP and Public Health for the WHO India Office which a few bloggers on SpicyIP have been working on for the past few months. The draft report can be found here and you may leave your comments here.
The week ended with Devika’s interesting post which looks at the copyright aspects of Hollywood ‘Inspired’ Bollywood posters.
SpicyIP Events:
The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore is holding its Flagship IP Week from 25th to 27th August. You can find more details here.
International Developments:
1) In bad news for enthusiastic football fans, The Premiere League has announced that it plans on clamping down on fans uploading videos of goals online as it violates their copyright. Read IPKat’s criticism of such a move here.
2) Vringo, a patent licensing firm has lost an infringement suit against Google in the US Federal Court. Vringo had claimed that Google’s AdWords and AdSense were infringing its patent on filtering technology to determine placement of advertisements on search results. The Court held that Vringo’s technology was not patentable as it was a simple combination of two well-known information filtering methods.
