August 2016

SpicyIP Weekly Review (July 31-August 6)

/ By / Others

This week, our topical highlight is Prashant’s excellent post in our series on John Doe orders. He notes that in stark contrast to the Bombay High Court’s streamlining of internet blocking orders, a division bench of the Delhi High Court passed an order on the 29th of July, 2016 that allows for the entire blocking of websites, rather than blocking specific URLs that have been proved to infringe. He summarises the orders that led to this one, and concludes that […]

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Countering the Menace of Counterfeits

/ By / Overlaps in IP, Trademark

In a development that brings to light some rather interesting issues, the Indian Government has accused Chinese companies of counterfeiting goods legitimately manufactured in India. Noting that large Indian brands such as Godrej, Dabur and Raymond have been at the receiving end of this large-scale counterfeiting, the Government has reportedly told Parliament that it has raised this issue with the appropriate agencies in China. As this article notes, this intervention could not have come at a better time, in light

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Do online advertising platforms qualify for ‘intermediary liability’ protection?

/ By / Others

A couple of weeks ago, The Wire, published an article by Apar Gupta titled ‘The Supreme Court’s Slow March Towards Eroding Online Intermediary Liability’. In his very well-written piece Apar, a well-known lawyer in the media-IT space, laments the approach adopted by the Supreme Court in an ongoing case regarding the display of advertisements related to ‘sex determination’ kits on the internet. The Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 prohibits the advertising of any diagnostics which enable a person to determine

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Recognizing (patent) flaws and dealing with them

/ By / Patent

Much ink has been spilt on the issue of Indian patent laws and how good (or bad!) they are (depending on which side of the you are) on this blog.  This post deals with a different issue of patent quality / examination etc.  and covers a recent report issued by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the functioning of the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).  It is extremely interesting to see the same issues that arise at

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“Mohenjo Daro” Plagiarism Claim Sealed

/ By / Copyright

On 28th July 2016, Mr. Akashaditya Lama filed an infringement claim in the Bombay High Court and asked for an injunction preventing the release of Ashutosh Gowariker’s 150 crore movie starring surprisingly acrobatic crocodiles and a couple of fairly well-known actors, such as Hrithik Roshan. It is scheduled to release on 12th of August, 2016.   Somewhere around the eleventh time, I realized that watching the trailer no longer constituted “working on the blog” and ended up finally getting down

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TOI Accuses Guerrilla Advertisers of Violating its IP Rights

/ By / Trademark

In an interesting development, the Times of India (“TOI”) recently issued a warning to guerrilla advertisers, who use the TOI’s newspapers for engaging in illegal insert advertising, about the negative legal ramifications that could result from this unfair trade practice. Noting that such advertisers are perceived by the public at large as “fake” and “fly by night” brands, the warning states that this type of surreptitious advertising reflects very poorly on the brand in question, indicating its tendency to cut

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Innovation and Regulation of Ayurvedic medicine: CSIR’s BGR-34, nimensulide in Ayurvedic medicine and other such stories

/ By / Drug Regulation, Traditional Knowledge

A few years ago, Open magazine published an excellent cover story “Ayurveda: Hoax or Science?” by Priyanka Pulla, one of India’s best science journalists. (She’s written for us on a couple of occasions over here and here). That cover story discussed several issues surrounding Ayurvedic drugs and how despite having a Rs. 8,000 crore market in India there is still not enough evidence for modern medicine to prescribe any Ayurvedic medication. In her story Priyanka asks “Why hasn’t the dazzling

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Financial Technologies (India) Ltd. gets sued for copyright infringement by American company

/ By / Copyright

The Mint’s Jayshree P. Upadhyay, recently published a detailed report on how an American company, Modulus Financial Engineering Inc. has sued Financial Technologies (India) Ltd. before the Bombay High Court for infringing the company’s copyright in its trading software and has claimed $480 million dollars or Rs. 3,190 crores, in damages. FTIL is a company which has developed a reputation for being the rare Indian company to successfully develop software products for the financial markets. Its main clients are brokers

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US Copyright law faces constitutional challenge

/ By / Copyright

In a major international development, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit to strike down the provisions on Digital Rights Management(DRM) in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In this post, I discuss DRMs, the EFF lawsuit, and then draw upon the differences between the US and Indian copyright regime on DRM protection. (Long post ahead) You may read EFF’s lawsuit here. Decoding DRM If you own a Netflix account and travel a lot, you may have been denied

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SpicyIP Events: 11th Prof. S. P. Sathe National Moot Court Competition,  ILS Law College, Pune (23rd to 25th September)

/ By / Event

ILS Law College, Pune has released the problem for the 11th installment of its Prof. S. P. Sathe National Moot Court Competition (Moot). The Moot is slated to be held between 23rd and 25th September 2016. This year’s Moot Problem deals with a few novel and thought-provoking principles in the field of intellectual property law. The complete compendium, which consists of the Moot Problem and Moot Rules, is available here. Exhaustive details, including a list of dates to etch in your

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