2014

Be Very Evil

/ By / Copyright, Privacy, Trademark

About a month ago, Google Inc. was the victim of some good-humoured lampooning at the hands of Peng! Collective, a German activist group, which believes in “subversive direct action, culture jamming, civil disobedience and guerrilla communications”. What Peng did was that it created a site called ‘Google Nest’ (a spoof of ‘Nest Labs’ acquired by Google) and purported to launch four Google products, namely- Google Hug, Google Bye, Google Bee and Google Trust. These products. supposedly created by analyzing user […]

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Delhi High court orders Roche and Cipla to mediate in Erlotinib (Tarceva) patent case

/ By / Patent

After fighting a long drawn out patent battle over Erlotinib (Tarceva), in an interesting development the Delhi High court has ordered Roche and Cipla to engage in mediation. The Erlotinib patent case is unique in many ways because it was India’s first post-trial pharma patent ruling in a post TRIPS world and also it was the first of its kind at-risk infringement case. A brief recap of the Erlotinib patent saga: As readers may recall Roche had sued Cipla over

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Enercon and Positive Patent Perception

/ By / Patent

The recent Enercon decision by the Supreme Court will go down as a landmark judgment. For a succinct summary of this decision, see Aparajita’s post here. And for a review of this decision and some of the questions that it raises, see my post here. In today’s Financial Express, I argue that this Supreme court ruling more than amply illustrates that Indian IP law is neither anti IP nor anti MNC. That is, if one were willing to look at

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(C)Leaning Up India’s IP Dispute Resolution Framework

/ By / Patent

The recent Supreme Court decision in the controversial Enercon saga (Alloys Wobben vs Yogesh Mehra) is a significant milestone for Indian intellectual property law. For a succinct summary of this case, see Aparajitha’s post here. One hopes that this is the first step towards a leaner IP dispute resolution framework. However, the judgment however leaves open the following issues:  1. What if X challenges Y’s patent before the IPAB in a revocation petition. Y then sues X for patent infringement. As

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And We Thought Java APIs Were Open?

/ By / Copyright

Tarun Khurana brings us a guest post looking at the recent Oracle v. Google decision decided by the US Federal Circuit. The ruling, holding that Oracle can claim copyright to Java APIs subject (subject to fair-use defences, etc), sent shockwaves through much of the tech community. In this post, Tarun explores the implications that this may have. Tarun Khurana is a partner at Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorneys, and its consulting firm Institute of Intellectual Property Research and

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The Whirlpool-Videocon Designs Saga-Part II

/ By / Design

As promised in my previous post, today’s post looks at the three defenses of functionality, novelty and two design registrations by the Plaintiff with minor modifications on the same day, which were urged by the Defendant in the matter of Whirlpool of India Ltd. v. Videocon Industries Ltd. It will also look at whether the issue of passing off in this case was rightly decided by the Court. FUNCTIONALITY The first defense urged by the Defendant was that of functionality

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Mickey Mouse Trouble: Disney obtains a host of injunctions and damages for trademark and copyright infringement

/ By / Trademark

India’s neighbourhood lanes have ample number of ‘fancy stores’ and stationary shops that are brightly lit and filled with goods catering to the demands of school going children. Since children love cartoons, much of their stock is printed with different cartoon characters including Disney’s characters (the famous Mickey Mouse, Mini Mouse, Goofy etc.). Children are usually easy to please and are happy with these products whether ‘fake’ or ‘original’. However, counterfeit Disney products are expanding from stationary, party hats to

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The Path to Innovation is Open Models and not IP: India at WTO Trips Council

/ By / Innovation

On 11th June, 2014, at the WTO TRIPs Council, India made a strongly worded intervention when the agenda of ‘Intellectual Property and Innovation: Innovation Incubators” was tabled by the United States and Taiwan. According to the Taiwan official, incubation centres provide a set of integrated resources including research, access to equipment, office space, etc to help small and medium enterprises to help offset the risks they face when starting off. The admirably strong statement by India outlined how the “narrow

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Rights of Tattoo Artists

/ By / Copyright

The Wall Street Journal recently carried a thought-provoking article on copyrightability of tattoos by tattoo artists; the article examined the issue in the context of incorporation of tattoo designs on 3-D images of sports athletes by video developers; the question was simple: when incorporating tattooed images of sports athletes in video games, should the tattoo artist who inked the athlete be given a cut? The question has been dealt with in a few law suits in the past but most

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (9th June to 15th June)

/ By / Others

  The week was a relatively slow one at SpicyIP. The first story to be reported this week was Spadika’s post on Atlantic Industries v. Simon Food Processors, a May 2014 judgment where the Delhi High Court awarded punitive damages in an ex parte order against the defendants for infringement of copyright and trademark; Spadika observed that the basis (‘attempted piracy’) on which the punitive damages were awarded in this case, where no actual loss was shown to have been

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