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).

The ‘Original Sin’ of recognizing IPRS as a Copyright Society

/ By / Copyright

The last consignment of RTI information that we had received from the Copyright Office had included a copy of the official ‘file notings’ pertaining to IPRS’s original application to be registered as a Copyright Society, in 1996, under the 1994 amendment to the Copyright Act, 1957. These file notings have now been uploaded on our website and are accessible over here. As explained above these file notings reveal the internal discussions and objections of the Copyright Office to the original […]

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Who is scamming the hundreds of crores in ringtone royalties: IPRS or PPL?

/ By / Copyright

In February we had carried a post on how PPL’s revenue from mobile ringtones shot up by a record 1857% in a period of just 6 years from Rs. 7 crores to over Rs. 137 crores. In a subsequent post we had pointed out, in considerable detail, how this remarkable rise in PPL’s fortune from licensing mobile ringtones had been accompanied by a remarkable dip in IPRS’s fortunes in the same segment. We had explained in that post how IPRS

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The role of Select Media Holdings Pvt. Ltd. in the IPRS controversy

/ By / Copyright

One of the questions asked by the Registrar of Copyrights in his notice to IPRS (available over here) pertained to the role of Select Media Holdings Pvt. Ltd. in the collection of royalties on behalf of IPRS. Javed Akhtar & Co. had alleged in their complaint to the Registrar, dated 26th December, 2010, (available over here) that IPRS was licensing their content to Select Media in violation of Section 33 of the Copyright Act, 1957. (Previous posts on the topic

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Breaking down the basics of the Javed Akhtar-IPRS royalty dispute

/ By / Uncategorized

As explained in an earlier post the reason behind the on-going investigation into IPRS was a complaint by Javed Akhtar & Co. against the non-distribution of royalties by IPRS. Although the dispute does appear to be rather confusing, after spending the last few hours going through the papers, I think I may have understood the controversy to a limited extent. (i) The complaint by Akhtar & the IPRS reply The complaint by Mr. Akhtar & Co. (available over here) which

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The story of how IPRS was investigated on the orders of Minister Kapil Sibal

/ By / Copyright

After 3 months of haggling with the Copyright Office for more information on the Copyright Societies – Indian Performing Rights Societies (IPRS) & Public Performance Ltd. (PPL) under the Right to Information Act, 2005 we have finally been given partial access to some of the information that we had initially asked for. As usual we had to request the Registrar of Copyrights Mr. Raghavender to intervene and explain to Mr. Saxena that the Right to Information Act, 2005 is a

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Big Pharma accepts differential pricing – FINALLY!

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In a welcome move, some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Merck, Johnson & Johnson & Sanofi Aventis have finally agreed to slash the prices of key vaccines such as the rotavirus vaccine by over 67% for some least developing countries. These companies will however continue to charge existing rates in developed countries. (Image from here) Big pharma has traditionally been very, very averse to differential pricing i.e. charging different prices in different countries. The primary reason for

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Examining the jurisdiction angle in the Sholay-Universal dispute

/ By / Copyright

A few weeks ago we had blogged on the Sholay-Universal dispute over the licensing of ringtones to Vodafone. In its interim judgment the Delhi High Court had vacated the interim injunction against Vodafone and had ordered Universal to deposit the royalties from the Sholay ringtones with the Registry of the High Court. As noted in the interim judgment the assignment deed between Sholay and Universal was capable of being interpreted either way and the Court therefore refrained from making any

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Guest Post: Plagarism, creativity & copyright infringement

/ By / Copyright

We’re pleased to present yet another guest post from Tania Sarcar, a student of NUJS. Tania had earlier written this post regarding the controversy surrounding the hit song – ‘Character Dheela’. Plagarism, creativity & copyright infringementby Tania Sarcar In response to our last post on the Anu Malik – ‘Character Dheela’ controversy, one of our readers Mr. Satish Murti has very pertinently pointed out the similarity with two other numbers – Bappi Lahiri’s 1987 song “Mere Dil Gaye Ja Zu

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Some numbers from the Annual Reports of the Patent Office

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I recently came across the Annual Report of the Patent Office for the year 2009-10 on the website of the Patent Office. The latest report for the year 2010-2011 is not yet available. Image from here. Some of the figures released in this report of the Patent Office are extremely interesting and if anything highlight the shortage of staff: 1. Rate of patent grant stabilizes: As reported in one of our earlier posts the rate of patent grants was shooting

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Draft RTI application – Administer with care

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In response to some of the comments requesting for pointers on filing Right to Information applications for photocopies of the answer sheets of the patent office examination, I’ve pasted below a draft RTI application that can be filed with the Patent Office. The applicantion can either be submitted in person to the patent office or alternately, it can be sent through registered post. The fee of Rs. 10 can be sent through either a DD or an Indian postal order,

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