The biggest development of the week and the SpicyIP highlight of the week was Spadika’s post on the Hathi Trust litigation. The litigation revolved around a suit for copyright infringement against Hathi Trust that was digitising books to improve access to the disabled and to preserve old and damaged books. She writes that the parties have come to a settlement that allows such digitisation, and that this concluded the litigation. A huge win for Fair Use and accessibility I might add and a fairy tale ending to an otherwise uncalled for dispute.
Our Fellowship series really heated up last week with a number of well written posts coming in. Balaji Subramanian, a second year law student at NALSAR had the first two posts, both on the TKDL. In the first post, he points out the fallacy of keeping the TKDL closed and argues that this will prevent it from reaching its full potential. In his second post he points out some structural and legal critiques of the TKDL which he opines has rendered its usage sub-optimal.
Our next post was from Kiran Mary George, a second year student at ILS Pune who writes about the IPhone v. IFon conflict. The post argues that perhaps Apple has a better advantage here in India than it did elsewhere in the world as it is a well-known mark and enjoys a fair amount of Trans-Border Reputation. This week also saw the third post from Aabhas who writes in about the full bench decision of the Bombay High Court in Lupin Ltd v. Johnson & Johnson. He points out that the decision may suffer from some potential infirmities.
Utkarsh Ravi, as his first submission for the Fellowship series writes in about the ongoing Burger King trademark controversy in which it currently appears that the US fast food chain may just need to change its name if it wishes to continue operations in India. This was followed by Kiran’s second submission to the Fellowship series with a post on smell marks. The post examines the Indian position and then ventures into a comparative take on the US and the EU positions.
Balaji’s third submission to the Fellowship series dealt with the grant of trademark registrations for military hardware in other classes and some public policy concerns that might arise out of this. Kartik Chawla who is no stranger to our blog, rounded up this week’s Fellowship series submissions with a post looking back at the various blocking orders that have been passed by courts in the past year and points out the potential chilling effect that this might have. He attributes this to the fault in our intermediary liability laws.
Swaraj also writes in about the The Grand Masters 2015 – In-House Counsel Legal Best Practices Summit and announces that while registering – SpicyIP readers are entitled to a 30% discount! So what are you waiting for? Register away.
International Stories
- In the light of last week’s tragic attacks in Paris, IPKat carries this post on whether Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons can be reproduced.
- PatentlyO carried this guest post on the Vringo v. ZTE litigation concerning SEPs. This dispute is bound to be closely monitored in India, thanks to the doings of Ericsson.
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