Author name: Balaji Subramanian

Balaji is a third year student at NALSAR, Hyderabad. He is currently an editor of the Indian Journal of Intellectual Property Law. He is fascinated by technology law and IP law, and is an active member of NALSAR's Technology Law Forum. When he isn't doing law school things, he wanders the country looking for quizzes to participate in. He can be emailed at [email protected].

Subramanian Swamy and the Constitutionality of Copyright Criminalisation – Part II

/ By / Copyright

(Summary: disproportionate criminal sanctions against copyright infringement seriously harm FoE interests -> to be constitutionally valid, copyright criminalisation must fall within the bounds of Art. 19(2)’s enumerated grounds -> the “public order” exception requires that the offending conduct must have a proximate potential to disrupt the even tempo of life -> neither of these requirements are met -> no other Art. 19(2) exception is attracted -> disproportionate copyright criminalisation is unconstitutional) Continuing from Part I, in this post I argue […]

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Subramanian Swamy and the Constitutionality of Copyright Criminalisation – Part I

/ By / Copyright

(Summary: Lessons from Subramanian Swamy v. UoI -> constitutional validity of Goonda Acts -> interplay between freedom of speech and copyright law -> addressing the argument that copyright law contains built-in safeguards that shields it from constitutional scrutiny -> idea-expression dichotomy is too weak to be of use -> fair use does not align with free speech interests -> independent constitutional scrutiny of the balancing of proprietary and free speech interests is justified) Last month brought us the Supreme Court’s

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (2-8 May 2016)

/ By / Others

Highlight of the Week This week’s highlight was Swati Muthukumar’s two-part post on the Delhi High Court’s judgement in Ericsson v. Competition Commission of India. Apart from her exhaustive summary of the contentions raised before the court on each point, she also emphasises the significance of the ruling, which clearly traces out the contours that form the boundary between patent law and competition law when it comes to SEP/FRAND litigation. She also notes that the ruling puts to bed the argument that

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Delhi HC stays abandonment of TM applications [Tidbit]

/ By / Trademark

Earlier this week, we’d carried a guest post by Ameet Datta which chronicled an inexplicable decision by the Trade Marks Registry to deem applications as abandoned on the ground of non-response to examination reports. On April 4, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks issued a notice on the official website. In pertinent part, the notice states: “Some complaints have been received claiming that some of the applications have been treated as abandoned even though the reply on behalf

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The Night of the Long Knives at the Indian Trade Mark Office

/ By / Trademark

Ameet Datta, Partner at the IP firm Saikrishna & Associates, brings us a guest post on an alarming move from the Trade Mark Registry to deem lakhs of applications as abandoned in a single go.  In an inexplicable move that will potentially have a devastating effect on thousands of trade mark owners and applicants and lakhs of trade marks, the Trade Marks Registry in India has deemed (if the reports are correct) about 5,00,000 Trade Mark applications as “abandoned”. This

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GSK announces decision to license anti-cancer patents to Medicines Patent Pool

/ By / Patent

Global pharma major GlaxoSmithKline has announced a change in policy that will doubtless benefit large portions of the patient population in low- and middle-income countries. In a statement on its website today, the company announced that it will not seek patent protection in Least Developed Countries and Low Income Countries. Further, it has announced that it will a more open licensing policy in Lower Middle Income Countries that will allow generic players to enter the market before the expiry of

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Busting the Drug Mafia: Commerce Min Responds on CL Assurance

/ By / Patent

The storm over the Indian government’s “private assurances” to the American industry groups continues to rage, even as the Ministry of Commerce and Industry issued a press release last night. Its significance and brevity (and the significance of its brevity, perhaps?) mean that it merits full reproduction: “There have been recent media reports that the Government of India has privately assured that it will not issue any more compulsory license. It is hereby clarified that such reports are factually incorrect. In this

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (14-20 March 2016)

/ By / Others

Highlight of the Week This week’s highlight was our continuing coverage of the Indian government’s private assurances to US industry players that the Patent Office would no longer issue compulsory licenses for “commercial” purposes. Inika Charles flagged the issue in her post on the ongoing Special 301 process before the US Trade Representative, followed by Prof. Basheer’s hard-hitting critique of the current framework that allows for the possibility of such assurances being made in the first place. He identifies the dearth of patient

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (22-28 February 2016)

/ By / Others

Highlight of the Week This week’s highlight is Rajiv’s two-part post on the newly released Guidelines for the Examination of Computer Related Inventions. In part I, he analyses the guidelines and notes that they explicitly state that CRIs may be hit by Section 3 (k), (l), (m) and (n), and compares the guidelines with the US and European position. A flurry of reader comments prompted him to post a second part, in which he deals with the examples in the

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SpicyIP Trivia: The Royalties That Never Grow Up

/ By / Copyright

This blog has always had a healthy fascination with the lesser-known quirks of intellectual property law. We’ve always had posts that throw the limelight on the interesting, the off-beat and the downright bizarre IP phenomena. I’m going to try and rekindle this passion for IP trivia in the weeks to come.  Tucked away in a corner of the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is one of the most unique provisions an IP lawyer will ever encounter: Section 301 is titled “Provisions

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