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 story of the litigation leading up to the ‘Special Resolution’ which curbed the rights of authors and composers

/ By / Copyright

This is the story of how the big music companies tried every trick in the book to keep postponing IPRS’s Annual General Meeting for 4 years after which they finally managed to amend the bye-laws of IPRS, in January 2008, in such a manner that they were in complete control of IPRS after ensuring that composers and lyricists would always be in a minority on the Board of Directors. (i) The strategy to cancel the AGMs in 2004, 05 & […]

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The story of how ‘Big Music Companies’ slowly but surely took over control of IPRS

/ By / Uncategorized

Although the full form of IPRS is Indian Performing Rights Society, it is actually a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956 and is limited by guarantee and not shares. Basically each member has to guarantee a liability of Rs. 100 if in case things get bad. As with any other company IPRS is governed by Article of Association (AoA) and Memorandum of Association (MoA). The Memorandum lays out the basic aims of the company, while the Articles lay out

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Did the big music companies on IPRS & PPL collude to deny lyricists and composers crores of rupees in ‘ringtone royalties’ – An investigation

/ By / Copyright

This is the first in a series of post on the state of affairs at the Indian Performing Rights Society Ltd. (IPRS). Pursuant to our last few posts on IPRS and Phonographic Performance Ltd., available over here and here, I’ve spent several more fascinating hours, over the last three days, poring over documents that were obtained from the Copyright Office, under the RTI Act and downloaded from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website. The results of this amateur investigation, carried

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Did the Registrar of Trade Marks have the jurisdiction to revoke the ‘MANJAL’ trademark?

/ By / Trademark

Pursuant to Mathews excellent post on the removal of the ‘Manjal’ trademark, I was discussing the case with him and we decided that one of the points, i.e. the jurisdiction issue merits a more detailed discussion. The Order of the Registrar notes that the Registered Proprietor of the ‘Manjal’ Trademark had contested the jurisdiction of the Registrar to hear the matter, on the grounds stated in Section 125 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999. The gist of Section 125 is

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The ‘Numbers’ continue to talk – PPL’s revenues from mobile ringtones has zoomed up by 1857% in 6 years; from Rs. 7 crores to Rs. 137 crores

/ By / Copyright

Pursuant to the incomplete information being submitted by the Copyright Office, in response to our repeated RTI requests, I decided to try and source the information from the website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), which I must say is remarkably well stocked, albeit a little disorganized. Our previous posts on these RTI applications can be accessed over here and here. Image from here. We now have the annual revenues of Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) from the year 2005

The ‘Numbers’ continue to talk – PPL’s revenues from mobile ringtones has zoomed up by 1857% in 6 years; from Rs. 7 crores to Rs. 137 crores Read More »

RTIs reveal intense battle between Registrar of Copyrights and IPRS, over release of royalties to lyricists and composers

/ By / Copyright

As mentioned in an earlier post of mine this morning the CPIO of the Copyright Office finally sent us half the information that we had requested for under the Right to Information Act, 2005. Appended to one of the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) Annual Reports was a treasure trove of information in the form of a string of correspondence, throughout the year 2009, between lyricists, composers, the Registrar of Copyright and IPRS. The correspondence shows us the intensity of

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Copyright Office provides PPL’s Annual Report for 08-09; Rs. 100 crores earned from ringtone and web streaming!

/ By / Uncategorized

Subsequent to our last post on the RTI applications pertaining to Copyright Societies and a brief email exchange with the Copyright Office, the Registrar of Copyrights Mr. G.R Raghavender, who is also the Appellate Authority under the RTI Act, swung into action to ensure that the CPIO dispatched the requested information to us.Image from here. The CPIO has sent us the following reports today:(i) Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) Reports for 2005-06, which was already given to us the last time;

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Enercon GmBH admits to invalid patents before the U.K. Courts but defends the same before the IPAB

/ By / Uncategorized

Subsequent to our earlier posts on the Enercon patent litigation, we’ve received information that two of the European equivalents, of patents revoked by the IPAB, were also revoked by a High Court in the U.K., four years ago, during the course of litigation between Dr. Wobben (Owner of Enercon GmBh) and Vestas-Celtic Wind Technology Ltd. A third patent revocation is still pending before the IPAB. The most striking feature of this judgment is that it records that Dr. Wobben has

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Lending an ‘Indian perspective’ to Enercon GmBH’s propaganda in the German Press

/ By / Uncategorized

The Enercon patent dispute is fast acquiring political overtones, atleast in Germany, with sections of the German Press reporting that German legislators have started making enquiries with the federal government on the Enercon dispute. In addition, the same newspapers have been attributing the voiding of Enercon GmBH’s patents to possible corruption in the Indian system. Of course this comes along with the rider that there is no evidence of the same. I wonder who has been spreading these rumours, especially

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RTIs against Copyright Societies partially successfull

/ By / Copyright

In the backdrop of the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2010 I thought it would be interesting to get some data on actual numbers involved in the music industry especially the Copyright Societies. Therefore in July, 2010 I had sent the Copyright Office a RTI asking for Rule 14P information (for the years 2005-2010), that is required to be filed on an annual basis by the Copyright Societies – Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL) and Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS). Initially the Central

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