2014

Law Commission’s Consultation Paper on Media Law-Responses

/ By / Privacy

The Law Commission of India floated a Consultation Paper on Media Law in May 2014 to elicit the views of all the stakeholders. The Law Commission is looking into the following questions: 1. Social Media and Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 2. Cross Media Ownership 3. Media and Individual Privacy 4. Regulation of the Media 5. Paid News 6. Opinion Polls 7. Trial by Media and Rights of the Accused 8. Defamation 9. Publications and Contempt of Court 10. Regulations surrounding Government owned media. These responses which […]

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (23rd to 29th June, 2014)

/ By / Others

Devika started the week off with a report on the 136th Meeting of the INTA. She emphasised on the fact that there was a sizeable Indian representation at the meeting and that some of the most pressing trademark issues such as parallel imports, ambush marketing and developments in well-known trademarks were discussed at the meeting. She also highlights the speech of Mr. Ram Awtar Tiwari, Assistant Registrar, Trademarks and GI, at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry at the WIPO’s

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Cable, Copyright and the Consumer: The Cases of Aereo and Jadoo TV

/ By / Copyright

Recently, the US Supreme Court held that Aereo Inc’s innovative business model of airing cable signals through tiny personal antennae to individual subscribers over the internet violated the copyright of broadcasters. We have previously carried a Guest Post by Mr. Manoj Menda summarising the decision, here.  Along the same lines, in Hyderabad, the police busted what the media has called a “satellite TV piracy racket” operating under the name Jadoo TV. In this post I look at the Aereo decision and its

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Plain Packaging and the WTO: IP Issues

/ By / Trademark

France is considering joining the ranks of countries that impose plain packaging requirements on tobacco products sold in their country. Plain packaging is the practice of packaging cigarettes and other tobacco products with a plain and non-distinctive wrapping without any visual or graphic material to suggest which company produces them. The companies can only imprint their names onto the packets in a small standardised font. The objective behind the measure was to counteract the promotional effect that the packaging of

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SpicyIP Tidbit: India ratifies the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired

/ By / Copyright

In an encouraging step towards promoting accessibility among the differently abled, India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, 2013. The treaty aims to increase the access that differently abled people have to copyright protected material. This will dilute an extremely formidable barrier to access to knowledge that the nearly 285 million visually impaired people around the world face. We had

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Guest Post: SCOTUS shoots down Aereo in American Broadcasting Companies Inc v. Aereo Inc.

/ By / Copyright

Aereo is a company in the US which broadcasted television programmes over the internet for a monthly rental fee. On 25th June, 2014, SCOTUS held that Aereo’s model amounted to a “public performance” of the petitioners’ copyrighted works, thereby constituting infringement. The decision can be accessed here. SpicyIP, in this Guest Post by Mr. Manoj Menda, brings you a quick update on the decision. Mr. Manoj Menda is an IP professional with over three decades of experience in handling IP matters and

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$15 million prize money given to Mathematicians

/ By / Innovation

Forbes reports that the Breakthrough Prize for Mathematics recently announced its first winners. Mathematics, though a fundamental bedrock of science, is often ignored by many including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (who administer the Nobel prize). The Breakthrough Prizes are given for 3 fields – fundamental physics, life sciences and now maths. It was started by a group of people including Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Sergey Brin, Anna Wojcicki, Jack Ma, Cathy Zang,and Yuri and Julia Milner. The prize for maths

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Short Questionnaires for Patent Agents and Software Engineers

/ By / Others

Mr.  Ravindra Chingale is a Ph.D. research scholar at the  National Law University Delhi and is also a consultant to the Ministry of Law and Justice. He is carrying out research for his project ‘Impact of Patent Law on Software Industry in India’. As a part of his research he wishes to carry out a survey of software companies and he has prepared two short questionnaires for the same. The first one is a questionnaire for employees in a software

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Remembering Hitesh Barot

/ By / Others, Patent

A few weeks ago, I’d emailed our SpicyIP subscriber group on the tragic passing away of Hitesh Barot, a leading in-house IP counsel. The India Business Law Journal (IBLJ) put together a wonderful piece collating the sentiments of many who knew Hitesh. With their permission, I’m reproducing it below. The link to the IBLJ website which carries this piece (in the latest issue) is here. And for Indian law students, you get a free subscription to this wonderful repository of the latest

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Natco vs Abraxis: Patent Win, but Regulatory Struggle

/ By / Drug Regulation, Patent

On June 18th, 2014, the Indian Patent Office, for the second time, denied a patent to the anti cancer drug Abraxane manufactured by US- Based Abraxis BioSciences. The first rejection by the IPO was earlier in 2009, based on a pre-grant opposition filed by generic drug manufacturer Natco Pharmaceuticals.  Earlier this year, SpicyIP had reported that Abraxis had appealed this rejection to the IPAB on the ground of a violation of procedural law (they were not afforded an opportunity to

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