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).

Justice Patel lambasts Microsoft for suppression and false suggestions in Anton Piller lawsuit – then offers mercy

/ By / Copyright

In an order passed recently on July 15, 2016; Justice Gautam Patel of the Bombay High Court has lambasted Microsoft Corporation for misleading the court into granting an Anton Piller order on the basis of “false suggestions” and “gross suppression” in its pleadings. As our readers may be aware, Microsoft regularly sues Indian companies for copyright infringement of its software. The usual tactic is for Microsoft or its law firms or its agents like Deloitte to engage investigators to scout […]

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A takedown notice that resulted in the discovery of massive copyright fraud in the Tamil movie industry

/ By / Copyright

A recent lawsuit before the Madras High Court, filed through Advocate Swaroop Mamidipudi, regarding the copyright infringement of 5 Tamil movies on YouTube has led to the discovery of an unprecedented scam in the assignment of copyright (internet rights), for possibly 166 Tamil movies. The origins of the lawsuit can be traced to a routine takedown notice sent to YouTube by Mr. R. Ayubkhan, the plaintiff in the aforementioned lawsuit. He is the proprietor of Khafa Exports and had purchased

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A few last words & a goodbye

/ By / Others

  After almost 7 years, 600+ posts and the better part of my twenties, I’ve decided to call it a day and step down from Spicy IP. The reason for this being that I’m finding it quite hard to balance work and the blog because of which I’ve decided to concentrate on only one and I chose the job. I will of course try to chip in with the odd guest post when time permits. As some of you may know

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Almost two years later, India’s new copyright law makes no difference to music industry

/ By / Copyright

Almost two years after it was enacted by Parliament, the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 has proved to be quite a non-starter due to both the incompetence and impotence of all major stakeholders. Forget the operationalisation of royalty sharing arrangements, which was in any case a distant dream as demonstrated by Abhay Deol’s recent experience, the biggest failure is the fact that not much has changed with IPRS. As I had reported a few months ago, IPRS had amended its Articles

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‘Basmati’ from Central India – Culinary heresy?

/ By / Geographical Indication

As we had reported earlier on the blog (click here), the Registry for Geographical Indications (G.I.), has ordered the Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority (APEDA) to amend its application for the protection of ‘Basmati’ as G.I. to include certain areas from Madhya Pradesh as growing ‘Basmati’ rice. For a variety of rice which has historically been advertised as growing at the foothills of the Himalayas, the inclusion of areas of Madhya Pradesh, located in Central India, at a

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Misinformation campaign over Kibow litigation continues

/ By / Patent

A few months ago we had carried this post pointing out how several newspapers had misreported the status of the patent litigation between Kibow and a Gujarati company by the name of La Renon Health Care Pvt. Ltd.  At the time we pointed out how several of the newspapers had only pointed out how the IPAB had revoked one of Kibow’s patents without highlighting the fact that the IPAB had actually upheld the more crucial patent. After this initial round

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Singers and music labels face-off over “feudal contracts”

/ By / Copyright

The ToI and Mumbai Mirror have carried this interesting story on an ongoing war between Indian Singers Rights Association (ISRA) and music labels with an increasing number of singers refusing to sign contracts which they have termed as “feudal”. Apparently, the Managing Director of ISRA, Sanjay Tandon and the singers are both alleging that the contracts being drafted up by the music labels are in violation of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012. The article gets lost in the nitty-gritty of

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Delhi HC rules on pleadings in patent lawsuits & App-stores in copyright infringement cases

/ By / Copyright, Patent

In two interesting judgments, in two different cases, Justice Murlidhar of the Delhi High Court has ruled on the scope of pleadings in patent infringement lawsuits and the liability of Indian subsidiaries of global app-stores in copyright infringement lawsuits filed by a book publisher. 1. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Mercury Electronics & Anr. This is the famous Micromax case that we have blogged about previously on the blog over here and here. Ericsson has sued Micromax for a sum of

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The challenge by Bhojpuri musicians to the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012

/ By / Copyright

In the last few months we have covered several petitions challenging the constitutionality of the different provisions of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012. The previous posts covered the challenges made by film producers (Bharat Anand & Sir J.V.M. Movies Ltd.), music labels (T-Series, Venus & PPL) and book publishers (IRRO). The last in this series of posts is the pending case of Devender Dev v. Union of India, filed before the Delhi High Court in May this year. This particular

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Working papers on the damage to the Patents Act, 1970 and the state of affairs at the Indian Patent Office

/ By / Patent

Over the course of the last year at Stanford, I got to study patent law under two of the leading patent law academics in the U.S. – Prof. Robert Merges & Prof. Mark Lemley, followed by a short stint at the Offices of Schiff-Hardin LLP (Many thanks to Shailesh Patel, George Yu and Chris Ohly for making the internship happen) where I got a fantastic frontline view of the American patent law practice before the PTAB and the federal courts.

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