June 2016

India contemplates WTO action over EU Trademark Law

/ By / Drug Regulation, Trademark

A few years ago, a series of in-transit drug seizures led to an outcry in the developing world. We have posted about this several times here. New developments have brought this issue into light once again. A quick recap In 2008, 17 seizures of generic drugs took place in EU on grounds of patent infringement as per EC Regulation 1383/2003. These drugs were in transit to and from developing countries. In 2010, India and Brazil started proceedings against the EU […]

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The Sky’s the limit on trademark overreach

/ By / Trademark

In this post, I focus on the practice of trademarking descriptive and common terms under the umbrella of ‘secondary meaning’, and how the overreach of such protection might have adverse consequences for the public domain. This week, No Man’s Sky, a highly anticipated video game settled a three-year long dispute with Sky UK Limited (formally British Sky Broadcasting), which gives them the right to use the word ‘Sky’ in their title. This is the first defeat in what seems to

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Constitutional Validity of US Patent Opposition Proceedings Assailed before the Supreme Court

/ By / Patent

One of the most vexed issues in the adjudication of patent disputes in India has consistently been the legal competence and professional training of the officers in the Patent Office who are tasked with the responsibility of such adjudication. As Prashant has noted on this blog before, the entrustment of intrinsic judicial functions to the Patent Office, relating to the adjudication of opposition proceedings and compulsory licensing applications, may violate the doctrine of separation of powers by providing a legal

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Dreaming Deep – Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Copyright, Part I

/ By / Copyright

One of the most popular buzz words in recent times has been Artificial Intelligence (‘A.I’) – and as fascinating, and controversial, as the development of A.I. software is, it also raises some interesting questions on IPR. In fact, in a draft report released recently, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs calls for “the elaboration of criteria for “own intellectual creation” for copyrightable works produced by computers or robots…” The laws surrounding A.I. and IPR, specifically copyright, are increasingly growing

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Dreaming Deep – Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Copyright, Part II

/ By / Copyright

In the first post in this series, we saw how evolution in Artificial Neural Networks has led to the blurring the lines of ‘creativity’, or the lack thereof, between software and human beings, specifically in the case of DeepDream. We are currently at a stage in software evolution where software is not precisely a ‘tool’, but not precisely an independent ‘contributor’ either. The second part of this post attempts to place that in the context of the current copyright law.

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Kriti: “Creation” or Copy?

/ By / Copyright

On the 22nd of June, a short film named “Kriti” was released on YouTube amongst much pomp and flare. Kriti is a psychological thriller directed by Shirish Kunder, and stars Manoj Bajpayee and Radhika Apte. The film crossed over a million views on YouTube within two days of its release However, on 24th June, a Nepali filmmaker, Aneel Neupane put up a plea on Facebook, alleging that Kriti was a copy of his short film, BOB! According to Neupane, he

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Justice Manmohan Singh’s flawed judgment on biosimilars

/ By / Others, Trademark

In this post, Prashant Reddy examines Justice Manmohan Singh’s judgment in the lawsuit filed by Genentech and Roche against Biocon and Mylan over the launch of a biosimilar for Herceptin ®. Prashant, through his incisive analysis, argues that the judgment lacks coherent reasoning. This is indeed a “disturbing trend” since India is a common-law jurisdiction and therefore, legal reasoning forms an important component of legal jurisprudence. Recently, Prof. Shamnad inter alia dealt with this issue here. [*Long Post] Justice Manmohan

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Udta Punjab: Of Courts, Cuts and Copyrights

/ By / Copyright, Others, Patent

Udta Punjab continues to soar at the box office. Thanks in no small part to the free publicity engineered by Pahlaj Nihalani and his “cutting” edge crew at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). Close on the heels of our propensity to “ban” (books, beef and all else that allegedly offend our rather sensitive selves), the urge to “cut” has assumed rather ravenous proportions in India. The respectable Rajan was heckled for refusing to cut interest rates (despite such refusal

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Brexit in Times of Caution

/ By / Others

Brexit and the World “We have become so used to Nanny in Brussels that we have become infantilized, incapable of imagining an independent future. We used to run the biggest empire the world has ever seen, and with a much smaller domestic population and a relatively tiny civil service. Are we really unable to do trade deals?”- Boris Johnson in his piece for the Telegraph UK campaigning for Brexit. I think this line aptly summarises one of the Remain campaigns

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UNDP Releases Guidelines for Pharma Patent Examination from a Public Health Perspective

/ By / Patent

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has published a new set of guidelines for patent examination with a primary view to sieve poor and weak pharmaceutical applications out of the patent pool.  In writing the foreword, Director of HIV, Health and Development, UNDP Mandeep Dhaliwal rightly observes that an appropriate balance should be maintained between protecting the rights of inventors and incentivizing innovation, on the one hand, and promoting accessibility and affordability of treatments, on the other. These guidelines have

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