Our Highlight of the Week was quite clearly Shan’s important announcement of the Government now allowing upto 74% Foreign Direct Investment in existing pharmaceutical companies through the automatic route as brownfield investment. Although 100% FDI was already permitted on obtaining approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, she notes that this should lead to an increase in deals in the pharma sector. In what she calls an uphill task, there will have to be a balance maintained between a foreign investor friendly regime, and the protection of our IP laws that are friendly to generic companies.
To start off the week, we had an engaging guest post by Sean O’Conner, the Boeing International Professor at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. In a condensed version of what was a longer post on his blog, and in light of the Stairway to Heaven/Taurus controversy, he argues that instrumental components of songs such as guitar hooks and riffs should be recognized as valuable parts of overall music compositions. To further demonstrate his point, he breaks down parts of the songs in videos, and focuses on the aspects of access, and substantial similarity.
Our second post of the week was Ritvik’s coverage of Genentech Inc. and OSI Pharmaceuticals LLC’s $67 million pay out in order to settle allegations against them under the United States False Claims Act. He contrasts such qui tam actions with the current provisions in India that deal with whistle-blowers, and the civil and criminal liabilities of supplying false information to government officials, and the Indian Patent Office.
Mathews then brought us the important notice issued by the MHRD calling for statements from the public in the inquiry against the IPRS. The notice comes in wake of the appointment of an inquiry officer to look into the matter, and calls for statements, along with documentary evidence of the same.
Next up was Vasundhara’s post on John Doe orders in the controversial Udta Punjab torrent leak case. She concluded that while the orders were well-balanced and blocked only the specific URLs and not entire websites, a dangerous trend was continued where judges do not actually verify the plaintiff’s claims by viewing the allegedly infringing URLs.
Prateek followed this up with the news of there now being a cap on the number of patent applications that may be considered for expedited examination. The notice issued by the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks states that only the first 1000 requests filed prior to December 2016 would be considered.
Shan then brought us two insightful posts, first of which was her post on the plagiarism dispute involving the mega-hit film, “Baaghi”. She discusses previous cases of Bollywood plagiarism, and the high threshold for plagiarism set by the courts, and the need for more precedential clarity on the issue. Second, she wrote on copyright collecting societies and their inefficient functioning, who sometimes come off as phishing scams. She covers their assurances to authors of royalties owed to them; and how the societies that were set up with the intention of providing efficient licensing for authors have now become rent-seeking monopolies.
In the next post, I covered the United States continued efforts to thwart multilateralism in international trade – with their recent block of the reappointment of Mr. Seung Wha Chang, from South Korea to the Appellate Body of the WTO. I contrasted this with their ever present pressure on India to adhere to the TRIPs plus regime that they advocate, and concluded with the ramifications that the politicisation of the WTO dispute settlement body will have.
Next, Madhulika and I brought to you an analysis of a recent patent granted by the Kolkata Patent Office for a model of a flying car. The patent was granted to a Dutch Company, PAL-V Europe NV, who aims to have the car in India by 2018. We examined the initial, as well as the final amended patent claims, as well as contrasted it with the cited prior art. In conclusion, we pointed out the legal, regulatory and safety hurdles that need to be crossed for this to become a reality.
Rahul then covered the Bombay High Court’s finding that ‘Dalmia ULTRA’ did not infringe Ultratech Cement’s rights over the word ‘Ultra’. He gives us a succinct analysis of the judgement, and notes that it makes for an interesting read due to the Court’s analysis of descriptive and prominent/essential marks.
To conclude what was a busy week, we had a guest post by Sonia Chauhan, an associate at Talwar Advocates. Very relevant to the current start-up boom in India, she discusses the benefits of having a sound IP strategy in place for start-ups at a nascent stage and the danger of leaving it too late.
International developments
- UK’s ‘Brexit’ brings up many Intellectual Property implications
- Led Zeppelin wins ‘Stairway to Heaven’ copyright trial
- The US Supreme Court rejected a challenge to their patent review system
- Los Angeles federal judge is expected to sign-off on a settlement Monday of the copyright case involving “Happy Birthday”
- Qualcomm files a patent complaint against Meizu in Chinese court
- Facebook and Google may be using copyright scanners to suppress ‘extremist’ speech
