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).

SpicyIP Tidbit: Did Sugen have proper title to its Sunitinib patent?

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Image from here One of the main requirements, while filing a patent is to ensure that the patent applicant has the right to claim the invention which is the subject of the patent application. Most patent applications are usually filed by a company which has funded the research into the invention after the inventors of the patent application have assigned the right to file such an invention to the company. In fact Section 7 of the Patent Act, Rule 20 […]

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Patent Office objects to attempts by CSIR & Co. to patent traditional knowledge and access biological resources without NBA approval

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Image from here For as long as I can remember, the Indian government and its scientists have never tired of tales of how unscrupulous foreign scientists were trying to steal ‘our’ traditional knowledge (TK) and indulge in ‘bio-piracy’ by accessing biological resources in contravention to the Biological Diversity Act. This was the argument used to first create the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) and then keep it confidential.  Well, as it turns out, the Indian Patent Office has been going

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DIPP notifies revocation of Avesthagen patent in Gazette; Patent Office announces new policy for TK related patent applications

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Image from here The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Government of India has officially notified, in the Gazette of India, the revocation of the controversial Avesthagen patent that we had blogged about over here, here and here. As we initially guessed, the revocation did take place under Section 66 of the Patents Act, 1970. The notification by the DIPP is quite curt, only stating that the patent was revoked because it was “generally prejudicial to the public”. The

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Debating the Business Standard’s analysis of the Avesthagen patent revocation

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Image from here The Business Standard recently carried apiece on the Avesthagen patent controversy where the Central Government (the DIPP) revoked a patent granted to Avesthagen, using a rather rare provision of the Patent Act, on the grounds that the patent was granted for ‘traditional knowledge’. The reason for invoking the rare provision was because the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, set up by CSIR and the Govt. had filed an opposition to the corresponding EPO patent filed by Avesthagen. You

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GWU – CII ‘Legal Education’ program set to make a comeback to India: Will it survive the criticism from the NGO + Cipla lobby?

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Image from here The U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), has announced on its website that it will be hosting, in December, 2012 the ‘8th Annual India Legal Education Program’, that is conducted jointly by the George Washington University (GWU) and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). The conference has usually been conducted on an annual basis ever since 2003, except for the last year when I don’t think it was held, subject of course to correction. The last edition of the

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Central Govt. dragged to the High Court over securities tribunal: When will the Govt. learn?

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The struggle against the Central Government apathy towards the tribunal system, including the IP tribunals, continues with yet another Public Interest Litigation filed by Delhi based lawyers in the High Court of Delhi questioning, amongst other practices, the functioning of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) without the presence of a Presiding Officer. The tribunal is a three member tribunal, with two members and one Presiding Officer who is required by the SEBI Act to be a retired judge of the

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Guest Post: "HMT: Time to share benefits with our farmers?"

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The earlier version of this post had some missing paragraphs due to formatting issues with blogger and hence I’m reposting this same post with the necessary corrections.Mrinalini Kochupillai, who has previously guest blogged for us over here and here, with regard to the Plant Varieties Act, has sent us this expose on how a University in Maharashtra appears to be misappropriating the rights to a certain variety of rice which was developed by an independent farmer. Like the TKDL story,

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Guest Post: Ownership and Assignment of Indian Patent Applications

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Image from here One of our long time readers, Dr. V. Shankar, has sent us this nuanced guest post on some of the oft-ignored legal & policy issues regarding the registration of title of an Indian patent especially in its pre-grant avatar. By way of introduction, Dr. Shankar is a materials engineer and a registered Indian patent agent with Maxval-IP, a company that provides services and solutions to optimize patent lifecycle management. Maxval is head-quartered in Los Altos, USA and

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Govt. of India follows up on SpicyIP reporting – revokes Avesthagen patent – first Indian victory for TKDL

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Image from here Six months after we had first reported on how Avesthagen was proceeding with its Indian patent application, despite abandoning the EPO equivalent of the same after objections raised by the EPO and the TKDL, the ToI has reported that the Government of India has now revoked the Indian patent in question.  We had initially covered this Avesthagen patent application (1076/CHE/2007) for “synergistic ayurvedic/functional food bioactive composition” in context of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). That post

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Karnataka High Court temporarily restrains German company from exploiting trade secrets of Homag India

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Image from here In an interesting judgment dated 10th October, 2012 the Karnataka High Court, sitting at Bangalore, has passed an interim injunction restraining IMA AG Asia Pacific PTE Ltd. (a German subsidiary based in Singapore) from exploiting the trade secrets of Homag India Ltd. the Indian subsidiary of a German company. The injunction also extends to one of the former employees of Homag India, who is alleged to have leaked the trade secrets, through his official email account, to

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