Author name: Prashant Reddy

T. Prashant Reddy graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, with a B.A.LLB (Hons.) degree in 2008. He later graduated with a LLM degree (Law, Science & Technology) from the Stanford Law School in 2013. Prashant has worked with law firms in Delhi and in academia in India and Singapore. He is also co-author of the book Create, Copy, Disrupt: India's Intellectual Property Dilemmas (OUP).

A Strange Delhi High Court /judgment on DTH Broadcasting and Copyright Law

/ By / Copyright

In a news report published in the Mint yesterday, Priyanka Mittal and Harveen Ahluwalia reported on a mind-boggling decision of the Delhi High Court in a lawsuit filed by Gulf DTH FC LLC, a Dubai based company against Dish TV India. In short, a company from the UAE, which had exclusive broadcasting rights for certain channels in certain foreign territories sued Dish TV for selling its Set Top Boxes (STB) and subscription to thousands of consumers in these territories. Rather […]

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Does the DU Photocopy Judgment Place Any Limits on Photocopying?

/ By / Copyright

One of the issues that has arisen out of Justice Endlaw’s judgment in the DU photocopying case is whether it allows for photocopying of entire copyrighted works. Shamnad and Ananth Padmanabhan in two different op-eds in the Indian Express argue that the judgment doesn’t allow for photocopying of entire books because the facts in dispute dealt with the photocopying of an average 10% of various books. I would like to argue otherwise. On the issue of facts, please do refer

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Govt. Appoints Nuziveedu Chairperson to PVPFR Authority

/ By / Plant Variety Protection

The ET recently reported that the Ministry of Agriculture has appointed Prabhakar Rao, Chairman of Nuziveedu Seeds to the Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority (“Authority”), a statutory body that is created under Section 3 of the Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 (PVPFRA). As per this provision, the Authority is to consist of 15 members plus a chairperson, all of whom are appointed by the Central Government. This provision also requires the Central Government to appoint one representative

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14 Months Later, the Wait Continues for the Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into IPRS

/ By / Copyright

As reported earlier on this blog, the Government of India had appointed a Commission of Inquiry on August 14, 2015 to investigate the happenings at the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS). The management at IPRS, which is a copyright society for music and lyrics, has been accused of many illegalities, including the siphoning away of royalties. These allegations, against the management (who are basically representatives of some of the largest music labels) date back to 2004. After multiple complaints from

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Really, Industry Sponsored IP Conferences are No Big Deal

/ By / Others

There’s an old saying: Blessed is he who manages to provoke a tenured American law professor to write out a full post in response to a mere four sentences. Jokes aside, I’m glad that Srividhya took out the time to respond to my passing reference to industry sponsored conferences in my earlier post. Let me begin with what I meant by “mid-wiving” of conferences by universities. When industries sponsors centres or conferences in academic institutions, there is obviously an expectation

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Whatsapp with Privacy and How Not to Deal with Frivolous PILs

/ By / Privacy

A few weeks ago, two millennial babalog filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Delhi High Court against Whatsapp’s new privacy policy which informed users that their data would now be shared with Facebook unless users opted out. Facebook had acquired Whatsapp for $19 billion dollars two years ago and it was only a matter of time before the company began to harvest the goldmine of data with Whatsapp.  Rather than dismiss the PIL in limine the Court admitted

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Book Review: The Law and Practice of Trademark Transactions: A Global & Local Outlook, Eds. Irene Calboli & Jacques De Werra

/ By / Publication, Trademark

Over the years this blog has covered several interesting issues pertaining to trademark transactions. Illustratively these include disputes arising out of trademark transactions (the Tiger and Maaza disputes), taxation of trademark assignments (the recent Fosters case), arbitration of IP disputes (the Telemax case & the IPRS v. ENIL case), co-ownership of trademarks after the splitting of family businesses and general strategies on licensing and securitisation of trademarks. The increasing value of trademarks to Indian businesses can also be gauged from

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The deposit orders in Ericsson’s patent lawsuits are neither “middle-path” nor “innovative” – these orders are flawed and illegal

/ By / Patent

A few weeks ago we carried a guest post by Professors Chien and Contreras. It’s nice to see foreign academics engaging and writing on Indian IP law. Over the last year, a lot of foreign law professors have been attending the numerous conferences hosted by the IP centres in NLU-Delhi and Jindal Law School on the issues of on Standard Essential Patent (SEP) litigation. Both law schools have received very generous grants from Qualcomm for research in IP and competition

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Counterview – The DU Photocopy case – How wide should educational use exceptions be in the age of photocopier machines?

/ By / Copyright

Continuing from my last post on the role of publishers and the need to protect their copyrights, I will discuss Justice Endlaw’s judgment in the DU photocopy case, which he delivered 664 days after reserving the judgment. (Warning: Long post!) “Copyright is not an inevitable, divine or natural right” I would like to begin with a discussion on the most quoted lines from his judgment: “Copyright, specially in literary works, is thus not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that

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Counterview: The outcome of the DU photocopy case isn’t necessarily good news for higher academia in India

/ By / Copyright

At the very outset let me congratulate Shamnad, Swathi Sukumar and the entire team who won against the publishers in the DU photocopy case that was decided on September 16, 2016. I do not agree with the outcome but who doesn’t like a good copyright fight! It’s a tough job to provide a counterview to a post by Gopika, more so since I heard that she won 11 (E-l-e-v-e-n) gold medals while graduating from NLSIU a couple of weeks ago.

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