Author name: Rajiv Kr. Choudhry

Rajiv did his engineering from Nagpur University in 2000 in electronics design technology. He has completed his LL.B. from Delhi University, Law Center II in 2006, while working as an engineer at ST Microelectronics in NOIDA. After his LL.B., he went on to The George Washington Univeristy, Washington DC to do his LL.M. in 2007. After his LL.M., he has worked in the US at a prestigious IP law firm based out of Philadelphia. Till 2014, he was Of-Counsel to a Noida based IP law firm where he specialized in advising clients on wireless, telecommunication, and high technology. Rajiv is the founder of Tech Law Associates, a New Delhi based law firm specializing in IP law, with a focus on high - technology, and patent law. His core IP interest areas are the intersection of technology and IP, Indian IP policy, innovation, and telecommunications patents. He is also an inventor with pending applications in machine-to-machine communications domain (WO2015029061).

Indian Patent Office – Expedited Examination – Does it in Record Time

/ By / Patent

  Our patent office had initiated the expedited examination procedure last year under the revised rules 2016.  This program has yielded excellent results and some patents already granted.  One of them has been granted in record time of less than 4 months.  This is remarkable as if I exclude the time taken by the applicant to respond, the patent office took only 19 days. This is less than a month! Great going and three cheers for our patent office! About […]

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Apple v. Nokia – patent privateering – Will the CCI take suo moto notice?

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

Last month, Apple and Nokia announced that they were settling all pending litigation with each other. In a statement available on Apple’s website, Nokia stated, “This is a meaningful agreement between Nokia and Apple,” Maria Varsellona, Chief Legal Officer, Nokia.  It moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners working for the benefit of our customers.” Apple filed the first complaint against several entities, all of whom had purchased SEPs from Nokia / or were

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A Critique of the Decision in Unwired Planet v. Huawei

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

On April 5, 2017, the UK High Court of Justice (Patents), Mr. Justice Colin Birss issued a detailed opinion [Unwired Planet v. Huawei ([2017] EWHC 711 (Pat), 5 Apr. 2017] in a matter involving SEPs and FRAND.  The Unwired Planet v. Huawei (hereafter “Unwired”) decision is extremely contentious and this posts covers only the issues that I believe need further consideration. Disclaimer: I advise several clients in matters involving SEPs and FRAND.  These are my views only. Long post follows. Background:

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Charging for Expired Patents: The How and Why the Practice Should Stop

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

This is a continuation of my previous post where I had briefly referred to charging for expired patents.  This post goes in greater detail in the issue. If I were to summarize this post, it would be: Portfolio licensing and FRAND commitments do not go together.  This post also highlights why it is important to keep the historical context in mind while dealing with 20 year monopolies as those of us who forget history are condemned to repeat it. A

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Qualcomm under Fire: Korea FTC, US FTC, Class Action Suits, and Apple

/ By / Competition Law, Innovation

  This (long) post is about Qualcomm.  Qualcomm has a business model that is based on IP, whether it is IP creation (SEP or manufacturing related) or IP licensing.  It has been the historical practice in the technology industry that licensing was, and per Qualcomm and related parties, still is, done on end value of device. Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia are three top players in the SEP licensing domain and unsurprisingly hold similar views as their business model is SEP licensing.

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Samsung gets a favourable ruling v. Apple from the US Supreme Court

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

In a crisp 10 page unanimous opinion, the US Supreme Court overruled the (unanimous) Federal Circuit decision.   The US Supremes held that an “article of manufacture” need not be the end product as was claimed by Apple and agreed with Samsung that the article could be an intermediate product or a component !!! “The Federal Circuit’s narrower reading of ‘article of manufacture’ cannot be squared with the text of §289. The Federal Circuit found that components of the infringing smartphones

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Analysis of controller’s decisions – April 2016

/ By / Patent

I am bringing a number crunching post after a long time – and is based on the 400+ decisions issued by Controller’s office in all four patent offices.  April 2016 was a busy month! The rate of grant, and allowance have increased significantly since my last post summarizing the 2013 decisions.  At that time the average number of decisions each month was ~150.  In contrast, the current rate is well over 400 decisions per month.  This is an increase of

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National IPR Policy: Taking IPR to the grassroots

/ By / Innovation

Post the creation of the National IPR Policy in May 2016, a series of road shows were conducted in June – July 2016 by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP).  These roadshows were conducted to create awareness about the Intellectual Property Rights as per the objectives of the National IPR Policy. The Policy may be accessed by clicking here. The DIPP invited several industry bodies, associations etc. to provide their comments on the outreach program.  In a meeting held on

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Recognizing (patent) flaws and dealing with them

/ By / Patent

Much ink has been spilt on the issue of Indian patent laws and how good (or bad!) they are (depending on which side of the you are) on this blog.  This post deals with a different issue of patent quality / examination etc.  and covers a recent report issued by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the functioning of the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).  It is extremely interesting to see the same issues that arise at

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Tidbit: IPO revises patent application / RFE numbering scheme

/ By / Patent

In an office order issued some time back, our patent office streamlined the numbering of patent applications and request for examinations.  This numbering system came into effect from 1st January 2016.  The new numbering system is in line with global best practices. This new numbering system provides for patent applications having a 12 character numeric fixed length standard and applicable to all patent offices.  The 12 character numeric length also includes Year of Filing, jurisdiction, type of application, and application number. The

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