Author name: Ambika Aggarwal

Ambika is a Ph.D. (IP Law) scholar at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. She is a SpicyIP Tech Innovation Policy Fellow (2025). Her experience includes working as a Research Assistant at the office of the DPIIT-IPR Chair, NALSAR University of Law, and she is also a recipient of the Danida Fellowship on Fostering Innovation & Commercialisation of Intellectual Property Rights (2023) awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark.

A Personality Too Spiritual for Satire?

/ By / Copyright, Others, Overlaps in IP, Privacy, Trademark

I had underestimated how much of the personality rights space in India is one big, vague, wild west! The personality rights order passed by the Delhi High Court in favour of the plaintiff, Anil Kumar Tiwari (aka Aniruddhacharya Ji Maharaj) shows what happens when an already confusing jurisprudence continues to develop without guardrails: IP law protections are claimed for ineligible content; social commentary based on meme-culture collides with ambiguous private rights; and, doctrinal confusion continues to blur the scope of […]

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Breaking: Breakthrough for India’s SEP Jurisprudence in new Philips v. Rajesh Bansal ruling!

/ By / Patent

DVDs are long gone from our markets, yet their SEPs continue to be on pause, play, rewind! A momentous decision has been delivered by the Delhi High Court today – a big, refreshing and important update for the developing standard essential patent (SEP) jurisprudence. The division bench decision comes from Justices Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla and is a turning point in the decade long SEP litigation between Philips and Rajesh Bansal. The case was among the initial SEP

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Looking for a FRANDly Precedent? DHC missteps in Malikie v. Xiaomi pro-tem order

/ By / Patent

A new dawn, and a new pro-tem order is out from the Delhi High Court. A short while ago I wondered if temporary deposit orders were here to stay, seems like the answer is yes! The Malikie v. Xiaomi pro-tem order is not the best news for the development of Indian SEP jurisprudence. It adds confusion to assessment of essentiality, nuances of rate calculation and shows the faults of finding reasonings in precedents where fact-sensitive analysis require different decisions. The

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Launching the SpicyIP Academy Research Clinic (SPARC)!

/ By / Opportunities, Others

The call for applications for SPARC Cohort 1 is now open!  We are delighted to announce the launch of SPARC, the SpicyIP Academy Research Clinic SPARC is our dedicated attempt at bridging the accessibility gap to structured peer review that a large number of Indian IP researchers currently face. We understand that substantive, expert feedback during the early and middle stages of research is still limited to a small number of well-resourced institutions. SPARC is our effort to build a

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‘Venetoclax’ at the IPO: Why Generics Need More than Patent Refusals

/ By / Patent

How much of a win is a patent rejection for domestic generics production? In this post, I discuss the specific points of IPO’s refusal as a continuation of Indian patent jurisprudence on Section 3(d), and why, irrespective of the essentiality of patent law to the discourse on generics, contrary to news reports, a single patent refusal alone is not sufficient in improving access to cancer therapies. The Making of a Blockbuster Drug Venetoclax is a blockbuster cancer drug jointly developed

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The Inventor is still Human: Indian Patent Office’s DABUS Refusal

/ By / Innovation, Patent

In keeping with a broad global trend, the Indian Patent Office has refused Dr. Stephen Thaler’s patent application which sought to recognise Dr. Thaler’s AI system DABUS as the inventor of a ‘food container and devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention’. The Indian patent office’s decision goes a step beyond the refusals issued by other jurisdictions and discusses, along with inventorship, the question of patentability of the claimed invention. The refusal of the Indian Patent Office is a part

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From Delhi to Bombay, Music Licensing Goes Off the Beat

/ By / Copyright

A lot has been happening with the repertoire of sound recordings that Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) claims to own and manage. It is being used in saree showrooms, a group of 94 restaurants, high profile pubs and bars, restaurants and more. Against all these places, PPL has asserted an infringement of copyright for playing music without obtaining licenses. This has created a bizarre mix of situations. Whether PPL can exercise any legal capacity to collect licensing fees, after having surrendered

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‘Pro-tem’ FRAND Deposits: Are temporary orders here to stay?

/ By / Patent

The Indian jurisprudence on ‘pro-tem’ security deposits in FRAND trials has been twelve years in the making at the Delhi High Court. Full details of the contents of pro-tem orders have been frequently discussed on the blog, see here, here, here and here. In this post, I am concerned particularly with what justifications have been used by the court to develop its pro-tem jurisprudence – creative expansions of the SEP litigation strategy toolkit are welcome, but not at the cost

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One Nation, Forced Licenses, Multiple Payments: (Un)Balancing AI Innovation & Copyright

/ By / Copyright

Adding to the steady stream of critiques on the DPIIT Working Paper on the interface of Copyright and AI, my post focuses on the proposed statutory recommendations, specifically, on how the proposal seeks to create new legal rights with no analysis of the corresponding duties and liabilities that will be triggered. In February, 2024 the Ministry of Commerce & Industry was sure that the existing IPR regime was well-equipped to protect AI generated works. Generative AI (GenAI) developers would need

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SEPs are Decorative Acronyms in Indian Innovation Policies

/ By / Patent

Core SEP issues are missing from new and proposed Indian innovation policies that seem overly fixated on generating indigenous 6G SEPs with little concern on how they may be managed, litigated and leveraged for domestic economic growth. In this post I discuss why it would be well worth the effort to follow a procedure for mapping SEP issues with dedicated impact assessments before further similar policy decisions are made. Introduction The rules of the SEP ecosystem are, at the moment,

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