Author name: Aparajita Lath

Aparajita is an Assistant Professor at the National Law School of India, Bangalore. She graduated from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata and Harvard Law School (LL.M). She has worked at AZB & Partners and Trilegal. She was also a Student Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Centre at Harvard Law School.

An unclear precedent : Accept the offer to surrender or revoke the patent? (IPAB order 29 of 2016)

/ By / Patent

Sribindu Chivukula recently wrote a post for us on the IPAB order relating to revocation proceedings where an offer to surrender the patent was also previously made. Sribindu concluded that “While the Act does not categorically state/forbid patentee from surrendering a patent through opposition/revocation proceedings, the IPAB’s ruling in the present case clearly established that a surrender is possible only when there are no proceedings pending with respect to the patent. If, however, any such proceedings are pending at the […]

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Is Prasar Bharati having the cake and eating it too: Star Sports v. Prasar Bharati (Supreme Court)

/ By / Copyright

(This post has been co-authored with Prashant Reddy) The Supreme Court ruled that broadcasters broadcasting sporting events of national importance must provide ‘clean’ feeds to Prasar Bharati. The issue in this case revolved around interpreting Section 3 of the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007 (“Act”) and Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Rules, 2007 (“Rules”). The purpose of the Act is to ensure access to a larger audience of listeners/viewers of sporting events

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Be Careful What You Pray For, You Might Just Get It – CTR v. Sergi Contempt Case

/ By / Others, Patent

The Bombay High Court (Justice G. S. Patel) in CTR Manufacturing Industries Limited (“CTR”) v. Sergi Transformer Explosion Prevention Technologies Private Limited (“Sergi/defendant”), recently dismissed four contempt applications filed by CTR against Sergi in relation to its patent infringement suit. The Court, following the test laid down by the Supreme Court in Food Corporation of India v. Sukh Deo Prasad (2009) 5 SCC 665), held that the power exercised by the Court under Order 39 Rule 2-A (consequences of disobedience

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generic pic of magnifying glass over the TM symbol

Trademarking Tragedies: Of Brexit Beer and the Nirbhaya Bus

/ By / Trademark

We’re pleased to bring to you an insightful guest post by Harshavardhan Ganesan where he examines the growing trend and relationship between trademark applications and tragedies. Harshavardhan Ganesan is currently an LLM student at the University of California, Berkeley where he is specializing in Intellectual Property Law. Trademarking Tragedies: Of Brexit Beer and the Nirbhaya Bus Harshavardhan Ganesan While the recent political divorce of Britain and Europe was difficult to swallow for many both in Britain and elsewhere, an American

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Supreme court on decriminalising defamation – the long and short of it

/ By / Others

On May 13, 2016, by way of a 268 page judgement (as uploaded on the SC website), the Supreme Court not only upheld the constitutional validity of criminalizing defamation under the Indian Penal Coe, 1860, but also created a new fundamental right of reputation under Article 21. As explained by Gautam Bhatia here, this is a dangerous move. This is also a ‘long’ answer to a straightforward question. I had written about the need to decriminalise defamation in a post

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Ritu Kumar v. Biba : Designs free at 50?

/ By / Copyright, Design

Ambiguity surrounding the “design” and “artistic works” relationship continues to plague the industry, especially the fashion industry. The fashion industry has long been touted as one of the most ‘creative’ industries. One of the reasons for innovation and creativity in this industry is the market itself. This paper title “piracy paradox” and Shamnad’s blog here, reveal that in practise this industry suffers/benefits from the “piracy paradox” i.e. “Copying enables designs and styles to move quickly from early adopters to the

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India creates a ‘licence of rights’ system for GM patents: Is it legal?

/ By / Others, Patent

We are happy to bring our readers a guest post by Prashant Reddy – a prolific writer, a Delhi based lawyer and a person who otherwise needs no introduction on this blog! Through this incisive post, he examines in detail the legality of the “Licensing and Formats for GM technology Agreements Guidelines, 2016” published by the Ministry of Agriculture on May 18, 2016. India creates a ‘licence of rights’ system for GM patents: Is it legal?   Prashant Reddy The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA)

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Creative Constraints: A new Perspective

/ By / Copyright

In this post, Vasundhara Majithia, our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant, examines and puts to test the popular belief that copyright constricts creativity and provides a new perspective on whether copyright actually promotes creativity. Creative Constraints: A new Perspective  By Vasundhara Majithia It is widely believed that copyright constricts creativity because it limits the rights of others to use the copyrighted information as raw material and thereby to come up with something new. While this might be true in most cases, there are quite

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Delhi HC’s Split Views on the Apple Trade Mark Issue

/ By / Trademark

In this post, Prateek Surisetti, our SpicyIP-Fellowship applicant, examines the “splitview” trademark case before the Delhi High Court. [Editor’s note: A typo in the heading of one of the arguments which had earlier altered the meaning of that argument has now been corrected] Delhi HC’s Split Views on the Apple Trade Mark Issue by Prateek Surisetti On March 1st, a single judge passed an order restraining Apple from using the word “SplitView” on account of alleged passing off claims from a

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From ‘informal’ to ‘in demand’: Commercialising grassroots innovation?

/ By / Innovation, Others

India is teaming with innovation and new advancements many that typically fall within the realm of the lesser explored and lesser acknowledged – the ‘informal’. Recently, Swapnanil Talukdar, a 19 year old boy from Assam was selected for the Innovation Scholars In-Residence programme of the Rashtrapati Bhavan for his invention – a foot-operated page-turning machine. Swapnanil built a foot-operated manual page-turning machine that assists those with upper-limb impairment or injury to flip pages of books easily. As he says, the

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