As the title explains quite succinctly, I write to bring to your notice India’s opening statement at the 56th Session of the Assemblies of Member States of WIPO. You can find the statement here. Prior to discussing the various elements of the statement, let me direct you to the 20th Paragraph. The statement brings to attention the fact that India was the first to ratify the Marrakesh treaty. I would like to pause at this point and talk about India and …
Both the thematic and topical highlights of the week have to be Prof. Basheer’s opinion piece in the DNA on the Photocopy case and Prashant’s two part piece providing a counter argument to Justice Endlaw’s reasoning in the historic DU Photocopy case. Irrespective of which faction of IP thinkers you owe your allegiance to, it is difficult to argue that Prashant does not have a point. I found the second part especially informative. In the first part, he discusses the …
Yahoo filed a patent application in 2007 for a method that scheduled the appearance of users’ online presence in an Instant Messaging (IM) application. Recently, it was turned down on grounds of containing subject matter that is ineligible for patenting. In this piece, I am going to provide you with a preliminary analysis of the judgment. I shall go into the broader issues in a later post. Nevertheless, I have attempted to weave in all earlier pieces on the same …
Yahoo’s Patent Application Denied Due to Section 3(k) Read More »
Given that most of today’s judges grew up in the era of Amitabh’s ‘Angry Young Man’ and laconic western protagonists, it is rather strange to see so many judgments play such a significant role in aiding deforestation. Even more concerning is that when it comes to comprehensibility, judges seem to be far more influenced by Gulzar’s indecipherable lyrics than Vijay’s sharp dialogue delivery. Thankfully, Justice Patel keeps it short and simple. Before I make this piece about my undying love …
Around two months ago, DC and Marvel attempted to force their will onto a small time author. Graham Jules, author of “Business Zero to Superhero”, was taken to court for using the trade marked word “Superhero” in his book’s title, only for the famed comic publishers to back out subsequently for “commercial reasons”. This here, covers the legal battle apart from providing a nice little overview of superhero literature through the 1900s. I will not be directly discussing the above …
I believe this week’s thematic highlights were Ritvik’s pieces. Not only were they quite analytically comprehensive, but also quite palatable relative to the complexity of the issues that he chose to deal with. His first piece was on the method of determination of the situs of Intellectual Property. In the Delhi HC decision that he analysed, the Divisional bench held that a foreign entity’s IP transaction was not taxable in India. Ritvik disagrees with this stance. He contends that the IP …
On 28th July 2016, Mr. Akashaditya Lama filed an infringement claim in the Bombay High Court and asked for an injunction preventing the release of Ashutosh Gowariker’s 150 crore movie starring surprisingly acrobatic crocodiles and a couple of fairly well-known actors, such as Hrithik Roshan. It is scheduled to release on 12th of August, 2016. Somewhere around the eleventh time, I realized that watching the trailer no longer constituted “working on the blog” and ended up finally getting down …
This piece is to bring to your attention a notice published by the UGC, requesting universities and affiliated colleges to provide Intellectual Property Rights as a part of their elective system. Electives are courses which students can elect for, as opposed to mandatory courses. The notice is signed by the UGC Secretary Jaspal S Sandhu and addressed to all vice chancellors. I am reproducing the text of the notice for your convenience over here. “ Creations of mind such as …
UGC Requests Varsities to Provide IPR as an Elective Course Read More »
This week’s highlight is Kartik’s two part piece on development of artificial intelligence and its intersection with copyright law. Despite the rather complicated topic, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. He lucidly breaks down the fundamental manner in which A.I. works and then moved onto explain how interesting questions on ‘authorship’ and ‘creativity’ arise as a result of the manner in which A.I. ‘creates’. If it weren’t for Kartik’s fascinating sci-fi like topic, I would have chosen Kiran’s piece as the …
Om Prakash Gupta, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, issued a notice which stated, without any reasoning, that the number of applications for expedited examination of patent applications would be restricted to 1000. Meaning only 1000 requests filed prior to December, 2016 will be entertained. The Controller General has placed such a limit by virtue of the powers invested in him by sub-rule (13) of Rule 24C of the Patent (Amendment) Rules 2016. Ritvik has reviewed the …
SpicyIP Tidbit: Limit on applications(1000) for expedited patent examination Read More »
