Gautam Bhatia, who blogs over at the Indian Constitutional Law Philosophy blog recently wrote an interesting piece for the Outlook where he talks about a case that we have covered ever so passionately on the blog – The Delhi University Photocopying case. In this post I want to try and reflect on the happenings of the case, and perhaps raise some questions of my own. (Long post to follow) For the uninitiated, this was a suit brought by a consortium…
In a momentous development, earlier this week the Government withdrew guidelines that enabled the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) exercise its powers to fix the prices of drugs that are not on the essential medicines list. It is pertinent to note that this withdrawal is prospective not retrospective; that is to say that this move will not reverse the price caps already placed. Brief recap of events: Last year around, May 2013 the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DOP) intervened and released…
SpicyIP is pleased to announce the 3rd Annual Media, Advertising and Entertainment Legal Summit (MAELS 2014). Details are as follows: An aggressive industry research that Lex Witness conducted within the various stakeholders of the industry reflects a lot of ambiguity in the understanding of the current legal & regulatory regime. The 3rd Annual Edition of Media, Advertising &Entertainment Legal Summit 2014 promises to brainstorm on the challenges faced by the Media, Advertising & Entertainment Industry and we shall together look…
The Union Cabinet recently approved of the signing of a Joint Declaration of Intent between Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) & United States wherein the US universities would be invited to offer online courses with certification in various disciplines on SWAYAM (Student Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds). Aptly named ‘Swayam’, a Hindi word which means ‘on one’s own’, the portal is India’s Massive Online Open Courseware (MOOC) platform. Apart from hosting their courseware online, US universities…
SpicyIP has just unearthed a set of IPAB rules that had been drafted by former IPAB Chairman Justice Prabha Sridevan. Despite being submitted to the government two years ago, these rules have not seen the light of the day. This is unfortunate especially because these rules could have brought more clarity and efficiency in the working of the IPAB, apart from saving time and money of litigants who have often gone to Court over ambiguity in procedure. For example, earlier…
On 23rd September, 2014, renowned playwright and Jnanpith award winner Girish Karnad was granted anticipatory bail by a Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Bangalore in relation to a copyright infringement dispute. The nearly 10 year old dispute is between Karnad and writer Gopal Vajpayee. Vajpayee had written around 10 songs for Karnad’s play Nagamandala, in the late 1980s. In 2005, Karnad requested Vajpayee’s permission to use one of the more popular songs in the print edition of the play, for a…
[*Long post] IP-Watch recently carried a post titled ‘Is the Development Dimension of WIPO incompatible with its role of IP protection?’ dealing with the ongoing debates within WIPO. Though I don’t regard this post highly from an academic perspective, it does ignite some thoughts which I would like to pen down here. As the post notes, “The World Intellectual Property Organization is a successful United Nations agency if success is measured by its generated income and the number of international…
A variety of concerned stakeholders comprising of esteemed academicians, former diplomats, scientists, lawyers and public health organisations have written a sharp open letter to Narendra Modi’s government on the decision to review India’s position on IP laws ahead of his visit to the United States, strongly cautioning against coercion from the foreign state to align India’s IP laws with the interests of transnational corporations. The letter begins by expressing concern at the timing of the review and disapprobation for statements…
Case- Agar Distributors and Ors v. IPAB and Ors (W.P. 364/2011) In an important judgment of the Bombay High Court, Justices A.K. Menon and S.J. Vazifdar have clarified the scope of parties’ right to adduce evidence at appellate stage proceedings in the IPAB. They held that the IPAB, though not bound by the CPC, is still bound by the principles behind Order 41, Rule 27 of CPC. Therefore, while the IPAB need not “indiscriminately permit parties to lead further evidence…
We started quite a busy week off with a post by Gopika on the Diageo Brands v. Khoday Distilleries case. Khoday was allegedly applying for the registration of and utilising marks that were deceptively similar to Diageo’s marks. The latter therefore sought an injunction on both of these practices. In her analysis she points out that, “Courts are loath to grant injunction restraining parties from applying for registration and getting possibly infringing marks registered….However, [an] injunction can be obtained restraining…