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).

Clash of the Courts: Indian District Court restrains Google from complying with a subpoena issued by an American Court

/ By / Privacy

In what is probably the first case of its kind, the District Judge at Vishakhapatnam has restrained Google, on the 4th of April, 2012, from complying with a subpoena issued by the Superior Court of California, ordering Google to share the password of the Gmail account belonging to an Indian citizen residing in Vishakhapatnam. The Plaintiff in this case argued that as an India citizen he had a right to privacy under the Indian Constitution and that the defendants could […]

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The Customs Order in the Dell case: Will it stand the test of an appeal?

/ By / Trademark

We have finally managed to get a copy of the order of the Customs Commissioner in the Dell case, which I had blogged about yesterday. The order is accessible over here and the previous post is available over here. As explained in the earlier post, the Customs Commissioner had allowed the parallel import of Dell computers into India on the grounds that the Trade Mark Act, 1999 did not forbid such imports.  The basic facts of the case are simple.

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Customs Department allows parallel import of Dell computers; orders Dell to pay damages

/ By / Trademark

In an interesting report carried in the Economic Times, it has been reported that the Commissioner of Customs has not only allowed the parallel imports of Dell computers into the country but also ordered Dell to pay demurrage & warehousing charges to the importers whose goods had been seized for over two months due to a complaint made by Dell.  While the report does not specifically explain the law under which the consignments were withheld, I’m guessing that Dell had

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Trying to make sense of TKDL’s access policy – Why is the Indian Patent Office being ignored?

/ By / Uncategorized

The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library(TKDL) which we have often blogged about on this blog for reasons that are good, bad and ugly, is an ambitious project, by CSIR & the Ministry of Health, Govt. of India to digitize and compile various traditional knowledge resources in India, into a digital searchable database. Although the TKDL has been rightly accused of over-exaggerating claims of its effectiveness, in certain cases, there is no denying that it has been very useful in opposing at

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47% vacancy at the Copyright Office

/ By / Copyright

One of the constant complaints on this blog has been the lack of resources and staffing at the Copyright Board. The situation was so bad that the Delhi High Court took suo-moto cognizance of the state of affairs at the Copyright Board. Maintaining and running the Copyright Board is one of the many duties of the Copyright Office. Recently, I filed a RTI application with the Ministry of HRD requesting them to release information on the sanctioned strength of the

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Why is it so difficult for CSIR to be ‘transparent’?

/ By / Uncategorized

Over the last few years, I’ve personally filed several Right to Information (RTI) applications with several government offices and save for some initial hiccups at the Copyright Office, the responses that I received from most Central Government Offices have been quite satisfactory or in the case of the DIPP, exemplary. The one sore exception to this rule is the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR). Image from here. For some reason, CSIR fancies itself as a private corporation which

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Bombay High Court denies Barobax ex-parte relief

/ By / Copyright

Tania Sarcar, who has previously blogged for us over here and here, has sent us this guest post on the first day hearing in the suit for copyright infringement filed by an Iranian band against the producers, music directors of Agent Vinod.  Bombay High Court denies Barobax ex-parte relief by  Tania Sarcar The recent controversy in Bollywood over alleged copyright infringement by Bollywood came to light when Barobax Corp, an Iranian music company served a legal notice seeking an injunction

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Madras High Court passes its first-ever ‘John Doe’ order

/ By / Copyright

In an order dated the 29th of March, 2012 Justice Vasuki passed the first-ever ‘John Doe’ order in the history of the Madras High Court. This order was passed in the case of R. K. Production (producers of ‘3’) v. B.S.N.L & 14 other ISP and several yet to be named ‘John Does’ or ‘Ashok Kumars’. The Plaintiffs in the present case were represented by Mr. A.A.Mohan, a leading IP practitioner before the Madras High Court. The order can be

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Is the TKDL a ‘confidential database’ and is it compliant with Indian copyright law?

/ By / Copyright

I recently filed a RTI application with CSIR requesting for certain information on the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). The main aim of this RTI was to understand the legal basis of the TKDL being a confidential database. Of course, there were some other questions that I raised in this particular RTI. Image from here. The questions in this RTI Application were as follows:  (i) Can any citizen of India access the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) that has been

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CSIR spends a whopping Rs. 74.24 crores on securing patents in India & abroad; refuses to disclose revenues from patent licensing

/ By / Uncategorized

The Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), India’s premier civilian scientific research establishment has recently disclosed in response (available here) to a RTI Application filed by me that it has spent a whopping Rs. 74.24 crores or Rs. 74,24,00,000 on securing patents for its inventions in India and foreign countries. Of the Rs. 74.24 crores, only a paltry sum of Rs. 1.78 crores was spent on securing the Indian patents. The remaining Rs. 72.46 crores was spent on securing

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