Divij Joshi

Divij Joshi is a lawyer and tinkers in technology and policy. He tweets @divij_joshi.

Copyright Innovation

Driving Them Up The (Pay)Wall – Sci-Hub and the Disruption of the Academic Publishing Industry

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Elsevier, one of the world’s largest publishing houses, has quite a hallowed history. Founded in 1880, it has today transformed itself from a small Dutch publisher of classical scholarship into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, controlling access to over 2,000 scientific and research journals and with some of the highest profits among any industry. Sci-Hub, a free, online, tool, has an admittedly humbler past. Started in 2011 by Kazakh student Alexandra Elbakyan, the project has no significant financial backing, its management is virtually…


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Patent

Patent Office Now Issues Bilingual First Examination Reports of Applications and Automates Processes for Issuing Patent Certificates

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  The Indian Patent Office has made some interesting procedural changes recently. In a first, it appears that the Indian Patent Office is now issuing official communication bilingually in both English and Hindi. A public post by the Joint Controller of Patents and Designs at the IPO captures one such bilingual First Examination Report (which is the report issued to patent applicants in response to a request for examination). This move could be a result of the larger policy objective of promoting Hindi as…


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Others Trademark

Canada Throws a Google-y at Judicial Comity on the Internet, issues ‘Global’ Injunction

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The Supreme Court of Canada, in its decision in Google v Equustek, on June 28, 2017, issued an injunction against Google and ordering it to operate in every jurisdiction in which Google operates, effectively making it a global injunction. The decision of the Supreme Court follows a growing trend in various jurisdictions of requiring intermediaries to give global effect to jurisdiction-specific laws. Case History and Background The case involved a suit for passing off, misappropriation of trade secrets and online…


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Trademark

Matal v Tam and the Question of Free Speech and Trademarks – Part II

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In Part I of this post, I reported on the US Supreme Court’s groundbreaking judgement in Matal v Tam, which held that trademarks qualify for the protection of speech under the first amendment of the constitution of the US, and consequently, a provision of law which refused registration based on the fact that such trademarks may be disparaging to certain individuals or groups, was struck down. This post examines the issues in Matal, on the relationship between trademark law and…


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Trademark

Matal v Tam and the Question of Free Speech and Trademarks – Part I

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The Supreme Court of the United States, in a unanimous (8-0) decision in Matal v. Tam (582 US ___ (2017)) delivered on June 19, affirmed a federal court’s decision holding that US Trademark law’s restriction on registration of disparaging marks violates the First Amendment to the Constitution of the US, which provides protection against laws abridging the freedom of speech. In this post, I discuss the findings in Matal, and analyse the possible implications which the judgement may have for…


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Copyright Innovation Overlaps in IP

Open/Secret – Assessing India’s Commitment to Open Data

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Image from here   The ‘Digital India’ slogan has not been enough to pull the government out of its digital data doldrums. India’s rank in the Global Open Data Index, which ranks countries on openness across various sets of government data, dropped 15 places to No. 32 between 2015 and 2016. While some gains have been made in the implementation of the data.gov.in portal under the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (“NDSAP”), these are fledgling in relation to the…


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Others

SpicyIP Weekly Review (June 18 – June 24)

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The week’s thematic highlight has to be the guest post on the ‘physical copy’ doctrine in Indian Copyright Law, contributed by MV Swaroop and Shrey Patnaik. In the aftermath of the Raabta-Magadheera copyright row, Swaroop analyses copyright in cinematographic films and the apparent divergence of the Calcutta High Court from the text of Section 14 of the Copyright Act in allowing the producer of a film to sue for infringement of a ‘copycat’ or substantially similar film. The topical highlight…


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Copyright

The Philosophy Behind the ‘Physical Copy’ Doctrine

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This guest post has been written by MV Swaroop (with inputs from Shrey Patnaik). In this post, Swaroop and Patnaik analyse, in the context of the Raabta dispute, whether the producer of a film has the standing to sue for infringement, or if such action can only be brought by the scriptwriter. Our earlier posts on the Raabta dispute are available here and here. The Raabta-Magadheera controversy fizzled out a few days ago, with the producers of Magadheera withdrawing their suit. Then,…


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Others

SpicyIP Weekly Review (June 11- June 17)

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(This Weekly Review was written by SpicyIP fellow Sreyoshi Guha) This week’s thematic highlight was the two-part guest post by Eashan Ghosh on the distinction between an action for trademark infringement under section 29(1) and that under section 29(2) of the Trademarks Act. Part 1 begins by highlighting this distinction as part of the contentions raised during a recent trademark infringement case before the Bombay High Court. Eashan argues that both the sections are embedded in an ‘activity-comparison-condition’ chain that the…


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Patent

Supreme Court of the US Reins In Forum Shopping in Patent Litigation

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The Supreme Court of the United States, (“SCOTUS”) in its recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, significantly altered patent litigation in US law by reducing the possible forums available to plaintiffs to bring infringement actions against domestic defendants. Background and SCOTUS Ruling On examining the sheer volume of patent litigation in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (“EDTX”), one might assume that it is a hotbed of innovative activity…


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