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).

Revised CIS Privacy Bill gives a free pass to NASSCOM and Big Data

/ By / Privacy

The Centre for Internet and Society, (CIS) Bangalore (not to be confused with the CIS at Stanford Law School) has released a revised version of its privacy bill. I had blogged about the earlier version of CIS’s draft bill over here. While the new revised version takes care of some of the flaws that I had pointed out in my last post, the revised version is hardly satisfactory.  But before I go ahead to critique the bill, I do want […]

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Guest Post: Intermediary liability in defamation cases – Parle, Mouthshut & Visakha cases to clarify the law

/ By / Uncategorized

Chaitanya Ramachandran, who has blogged for us previously over hereand here, has sent us this excellent guest post analyzing the extent of intermediary liability in the context of defamation lawsuits. The specific backdrop to this post is first the recent litigation by Parle against Facebook, Twitter & Google, second the problems being faced by Mouthshut.com and third the pending appeal before the Supreme Court against the decision of the Andhra Pradesh High Court where the Court refused to quash criminal

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IPRS complies with new copyright law & decides to collect ringtone royalties – no news about its re-registration from the Copyright Office

/ By / Copyright

More than a year after the new copyright law came into force we have no news from the Copyright Office on the status of the registration or re-registration of the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) as a copyright society. Emails to the Registrar of Copyright remain unanswered – given the concerns and public interest involved in the registration of IPRS as a copyright society we were expecting the Registrar of Copyrights to set new benchmarks for transparency in the re-registration

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Debating the CIS Draft Bill on Privacy: Should this be the way forward for a privacy law in India?

/ By / Privacy

Forbes India has published this interesting article by Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) at Bangalore on the need for private industry to push for strong privacy laws in India. Sunil’s piece is part of a larger effort by CIS to draft a privacy law for India which will discussed and debated through a series of roundtable conferences. The law is based on the recommendations of the Justice Shah Committee Report on the need for privacy

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The BDR compulsory licensing application and the BMS ‘Statements of Working’

/ By / Patent

It has been almost 6 months since BDR Pharmaceuticals filed a compulsory licensing application for the Dastinib patent owned by BMS. We had written about it over here. There has been little news about this CL and so we did a bit of prodding around. And as always the online records of the patent office are incomplete – so we do the next best thing – speculate!  As per the documents we found on the Patent Office’s website, it appears

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When cancer drugs stop being “necessities”: A case study of Tykerb & Herceptin

/ By / Patent

In economics, as is the case with real life, “cancer drugs” would be classified as necessary goods or necessities as opposed to normal goods like telephones or luxury goods like fancy cars. This would mean that regardless of the price the demand for cancer drugs should not really fluctuate too much. Image from Investopedia over here On other hands, the demand for normal goods, which are not necessities, will change in response to the unit price of the good. If

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A naïve report from Parliament on FDI in the Pharmaceutical Industry

/ By / Uncategorized

Over the last two decades, the Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committees have slowly but surely matured into credible institutions that contribute significantly to policy formulation in India. Sadly though, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce continues to be an exception to this rule of evolution.  Its latest report on “FDI in Pharmaceutical Sector” (available over here) comes to sweeping conclusions against FDI in the pharmaceutical industry with little or no supporting empirical evidence. Policy documents seeking to effect major policy changes

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Surprising news! – Roche decides to not ‘pursue’ Herceptin patents in India

/ By / Uncategorized

In an extremely surprising development, which was first reported by Vikas Dandekar of PharmAsia, in an article available over here, Roche (which owns Genentech) has announced that it will no longer “pursue” its Herceptin patents in India.  In his statement to PharmAsia, Roche’s spokesperson was quoted as saying that Roche will “not pursue its Indian Patent 205534 and the related divisional applications”. All of these patents and applications which are owned by Genentech have been in trouble for the last

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Patent Office confirms status of Genentech’s Herceptin patent

/ By / Uncategorized

Following my post yesterday, the Patent Office has finally confirmed the status of the main Herceptin patent 205534 with the following email: “As per the E-Register, 15th Annuity was due on 03.05.2013 and same has not been paid so far, therefore it shows ceased as of 03.05.2013.However Section 53 of the Patents Act reads with Rule 80 allows the Patentee to pay the same within the extended period not more than six months, if the request for such extension of

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Has Genentech’s main Herceptin patent lapsed?

/ By / Uncategorized

During the course of the last ten days, while researching on the story related to Herceptin’s divisional patents, we came across this interesting factoid on the main Herceptin patent: 205534. As per the e-register on the patent office website, accessible over here, you will note that this patent has ceased as of May 3, 2013.  From the patent register, it appears that Genentech has not paid the annual renewal fees before the statutory deadline. The last payment recorded in the

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