Adarsh Ramanujan

Adarsh is an independent counsel with offices in Delhi and Chennai. Before starting his own practice he spent considerable time with Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan at their New Delhi and Geneva offices. He obtained his B.Sc. LL.B. (Hons.) degree (Gold Medalist) from National Law University, Jodhpur and LL.M. degree from University of California, Berkeley. He is a qualified Patent Agent in India. A major portion of his time is spent practicing in the areas of IP & Technology Laws as well as in International Trade Law. He has however branched out into doing commercial litigation and arbitration work. His expertise also extends to regulatory laws such as environmental laws, biodiversity laws and cyber laws. Adarsh has taught patent law in NLU, Delhi, NLU, Jodhpur and at the CEIPI Institute (University of Strasbourg). He has authored or co-authored close to 30 publications on diverse topics, including on IP, WTO, constitutional law and international tax.

Copyright

SCOTUS Decision in Google v. Oracle: Distorting ‘Fair Use’ but the Scathing (and Logical) Dissent is the One Saving Grace (Part II)

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In Part I of this two-part post, I introduced the SCOTUS’ judgment, the concept of API and summarised the majority’s finding. In this Part II, I summarise the minority opinion and share my critique of the judgment. The minority’s opinion The minority agrees with the majority insofar as “fair use” being a mixed question of fact and law. The minority disagrees with everything else. The minority criticises the Courts approach of determining the application of an exception/defence without issuing a…


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Copyright

SCOTUS Decision in Google v. Oracle: Distorting ‘Fair Use’ but the Scathing (and Logical) Dissent is the One Saving Grace (Part I)

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On 5th April, the Supreme Court of the United States allowed Google’s appeal and held that Google’s copying of roughly 11,500 lines of code relating to 37 software packages forming part of Sun Java Application Programming Interface (API), owned by Oracle, was protected by ‘fair use’. The majority opinion was delivered by Justice Breyer (joined by 5 other judges), and a dissenting opinion was filed by Justice Thomas (joined by one other judge). One judge (Justice Barrett took no part…


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Copyright Others

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) Sales and Copyright Assignment: Part II (Some Issues for Discussion)

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In Part I, I briefly introduced NFTs, how they operate and why they are being hailed by content creators in the digital space. I had postulated that the NFT sale may just be the sale of the original/authentic copy of the work, or attached with a copyright license, or even an assignment, depending on the contractual terms. I had surmised that it would most likely not have any copyright license or assignment, based on a few contracts I could locate…


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Copyright Others

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) Sales and Copyright Assignment: Part I (The Contract is the Key)

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(Editor’s note: If readers are unfamiliar with what Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are and would like an explainer, you can refer to our earlier post by Awani Kelkar here. Adarsh’s two-part post goes on to do a deep dive including into some of the questions raised there.) NFTs have been all the rage quite recently, and many would have come across the articles on some NFTs being been sold for huge money by way of auction (here, here). But what does…


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Design

Lego Succeeds at EU Level for the Simplest of Reasons

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Earlier this week, the General Court of the European Union (part of the Court of Justice for the European Union or the ECJ) ruled in favour of Lego in Case T-515/19. The Board of the appeal of the EU IPO had declared Legos community design registration number 1664368-0006 corresponding to the description “building blocks for a toy building set”. The Board of the appeal of the EU IPO had overturned a decision of the EU IPO in a cancellation proceeding…


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Copyright

Some Musings on Supreme Court’s Judgement on Taxation of Software

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A recent post on blog already carries an analysis of the latest Supreme Court judgement in the case of  Engineering Analysis Centre of Excellence Private Limited v. The Commission of Income Tax and Anr. The judgment concerned the classification of payments under distribution agreements/end-user license agreements (EULA). The specific question was whether such payments amounted to “royalty” under Section 9(1)(vi) of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1961, thereby giving rise to income taxable in India for foreign residents. After accounting…


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Copyright

The Delhi High Court Judgement in the IPRS Case (2021)

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This blog carried a piece on the Delhi High Court’s recent judgment in IPRS v. Entertainment Network (India) Ltd. last week. As pointed out there, the judgement distinguishes between cases where underlying works (lyrics/musical composition) are used in the context of the broadcast of sound recordings versus other situations (e.g. live performances). In the latter case, the Court held that an injunction could be sought by authors/composers (or by the Copyright Society representing their interests) but not in the former…


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Biological Diversity

National Biodiversity Authority Imposing Upfront Monetary Payment as Benefit Sharing for Research

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There has been a recent development in the context of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (‘BDA’), which I thought was interesting to share and discuss on the blog. Back in 2018, the Central Government issued the direction to the National Biodiversity Authority (‘NBA’) purportedly under Section 48 of the BDA. According to this office memorandum (followed by another) a kind of immunity deal was provided for persons who had committed any acts without the required approval from the authorities under…


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Trademark

IPAB’s Order Staying ‘N95’ Trademark Registration Highlights Systemic Failures

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Introduction In an order earlier this month, the IPAB issued an interim stay of the operation of the trademark registration for the word ‘N95’ (registration number 4487559 in class 10). The IPAB prima facie held that ‘N95’ is a generic word and could not have been registered under section 9 of the Trade Marks Act. I have no comment on the outcome of the order, and frankly, it is doubtful whether the registration would survive a final hearing. There have…


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Patent

The New Form 27 (Patent Working Statement): Heading in the Wrong Direction?

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As Pankhuri noted in a recent post, the Government of India published the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2020 last month, inter alia, amending the format/contents of the working statements or Form 27 to be filed by every patentee and licensee. The contents of the new Form 27 have already been discussed in her post here. Removal of requirement to make statement on meeting public requirement The new Form 27 removes the requirement of having to make a vague statement on whether…


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