Author name: Rahul Bajaj

Rahul Bajaj is a fourth year law student at the University of Nagpur. His interest in intellectual property law began taking a concrete shape when he pursued Professor William Fisher's online course on copyright law in the second year of law school. Since then, Rahul has worked on a diverse array of IP matters during his internships. He is particularly interested in studying the role of intellectual property law in facilitating access to education.

SpicyIP Weekly Review (August 15-21)

/ By / Others

Our thematic highlight of this week is a 2-part post by Balaji in which he analyzes the consequences of 3 TRIPS+ free trade agreements for India from the vantage point of IP and the digital economy: the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). In the first post Balaji tabulates the standards that these agreements mandate and examines whether or not Indian law is in consonance with these standards. Finally, […]

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Delhi High Court Adopts an Expansive Interpretation of Cause of Action; Holds that it has Jurisdiction to Decide Legality of Cancellation of Compulsory Licenses

/ By / Copyright

While legal contestations between plaintiffs and defendants as regards the infraction of the former’s intellectual property rights make for interesting analysis, a large portion of an IP litigator’s career is spent on getting the procedural issues right. Ascertaining with surgical precision the cause of action upon which the suit is founded, establishing that a court does possess the territorial jurisdiction to adjudicate upon a dispute and complying with the myriad procedural prerequisites for a suit to stand in court are

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Countering the Menace of Counterfeits

/ By / Overlaps in IP, Trademark

In a development that brings to light some rather interesting issues, the Indian Government has accused Chinese companies of counterfeiting goods legitimately manufactured in India. Noting that large Indian brands such as Godrej, Dabur and Raymond have been at the receiving end of this large-scale counterfeiting, the Government has reportedly told Parliament that it has raised this issue with the appropriate agencies in China. As this article notes, this intervention could not have come at a better time, in light

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TOI Accuses Guerrilla Advertisers of Violating its IP Rights

/ By / Trademark

In an interesting development, the Times of India (“TOI”) recently issued a warning to guerrilla advertisers, who use the TOI’s newspapers for engaging in illegal insert advertising, about the negative legal ramifications that could result from this unfair trade practice. Noting that such advertisers are perceived by the public at large as “fake” and “fly by night” brands, the warning states that this type of surreptitious advertising reflects very poorly on the brand in question, indicating its tendency to cut

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Bombay HC Effectively Transforms John Does from Swords to Shields – Delineates Most Robust Safeguards to Date

/ By / Copyright

Last week, Professor Basheer discussed the Bombay High Court’s refusal to grant a John Doe order for the movie Dishoom, which is slated for release on the 29th of July. Noting that Justice Patel’s refusal to grant a John Doe order merely on the basis of the ipse dixit of the plaintiff marks a paradigmatic shift in the John Doe jurisprudence of Indian courts, Professor Basheer had expressed the hope that Justice Patel would lay down a “nuanced, comprehensive and

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Bombay HC’s Latest Ruling on John Doe Creates a Jurisprudence of Doubt

/ By / Copyright

As our readers would recall, we had covered the issuance of two John Doe Orders by Justice Patel of the Bombay High Court that were circumscribed by robust safeguards a couple of weeks ago. Justice Patel unequivocally recognized the proposition that John Doe orders must be based on concrete and precise information and must be narrowly tailored to block specific URLs in contradistinction to entire websites. After a round of cautionary views on this blog (here and here), he also

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Award of Punitive Damages by the Delhi High Court: No Method to the Madness

/ By / Trademark

In the realm of trademark law, Indian courts, especially the Delhi High Court, have failed to articulate a set of coherent, uniform, intellectually defensible and legally tenable parameters for computing the amount of damages to be awarded to successful plaintiffs. To be sure, the problem is not one which is exclusively confined to trademark law. As Prashant has noted, the Delhi High Court’s jurisprudence on punitive damages in IP cases in general is founded upon a fallacious understanding of applicable

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SpicyIP Weekly Review: July 4th – 10th

/ By / Copyright, Patent

SpicyIP Highlights of the Week: Our highlights of the week were two posts relating to the issuance of John Doe orders that tell very different stories. The first post was my coverage of the Bombay High Court’s issuance of John Doe orders in two cases that were circumscribed by robust safeguards, in light of the criticism articulated on this Blog about broad-based John Doe orders. The orders can be accessed here, here and here. As I note in the article,

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Plagiarism by Government Bodies on the Rise; 3 More Instances Come to Light

/ By / Copyright

A few months ago, we had blogged about the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) copying large portions of its article on the application of FRAND terms to the licensing of Standard Essential Patents from an article published by Jones Day in 2013 on the same subject. Taking cognizance of Dr. Arul Scaria’s plagiarism allegations, the DIPP subsequently revised the article and cited the sources on which the article was based. This incident would not be a huge cause

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Breaking News: SpicyIP Gets Cited in Latest John Doe Orders

/ By / Copyright

In the realm of copyright law, one of the most widely used remedies, whose laudable object of preventing wholesale infringement has been significantly offset by the chilling effect that it has had on free speech, are the now ubiquitous “John Doe” orders. As Kartik has noted on this blog before, the regime of John Doe orders is “like an expanding castle of tumour, set within the intricate machine of the legal system, fed by existing infirmities such as the very

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