Arnab Goswami is all over the news! Just like he always wanted to be…except this time he can’t be accused of manufacturing it. Or perhaps not; after all, law suits are a great way of boosting TRP’s! But best of all, this is an IP controversy! So how could SpicyIP not cover it? Here is a quick piece I did for the Newslaundry some days ago reflecting on the various IP infringement charges that have been made against Arnab by…
Continuing our long lost QU-IP series, here comes a rather quirky one from Lord Jonathan Sumption. “But there have been two occasions in my professional life when I have been shaken in my view that it is all just law. One was my only foray, as Counsel, into patent litigation. I will not trouble you with this unhappy story. It persuaded me that chemical patents at least were a remote juridical island, best left to its savage inhabitants.” Sumption was…
Hold on! Surely the title is misleading. The US never ever issues compulsory licenses (CL’s)! At least that’s what the tone and tenor of the notorious Special 301 reports suggest. Where, year after year, the US government takes issue with countries that have the temerity to tame patents through compulsory licenses. India issued just one license in the post TRIPS era, and look at how much flak we’ve already received! Even the latest special 301 report continues the anti-CL rant. Ahh…
A Supreme Court bench consisting of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha refused to admit the IRRO appeal. Asking their counsel (Mr SC aggarwal) as to how their special leave petition (SLP) to appeal is even maintainable. Given that the original suit filed before the Delhi high court had been withdrawn by the publisher plaintiffs (OUP etc) and the IRRO was merely an intervenor in the lower court proceedings. Justice Gogoi appeared upset with the petitioners, berating them for “wasting…
I barely knew him. But he taught me the most valuable lesson of them all. To take the “adversary” out of the “adversarial”! That was Tehmtan Andhyarujina for you. One of the finest counsels to have graced our courts. Sadly, he is no more with us. We were pitted against each other in the famed Novartis patent litigation. Although I was appearing as an academic intervenor cum amicus before the court, he knew that my ultimate stand was deeply…
In a stunning development, OUP, CUP and Taylor & Francis just withdrew their copyright law suit filed against Delhi University (and its photocopier, Rameshwari) 5 years ago! They indicated this to the Delhi high court in a short and succinct filing made this morning. This withdrawal brings to an end one of the most hotly contested IP battles ever, pitting as it did multinational publishers against academics and students. The law suit was filed as far back as 2012 and…
In a recent post, I reflected on the disingenuous US Chamber of Commerce rankings designed to coerce India into picking up TRIPS plus IP standards that suit US industrial interests! I exhorted that India should use this opportunity to break the obsolete IP paradigm and refuse to play ball on the patent numbers game! Some months ago, I had the opportunity to reflect more on this “Break in India” theme for a special issue of the Seminar. For those interested, the…
The US Chamber of Commerce is at it again! Ranking India close to the bottom of its inane IP index. Unfortunately, some of our commentators have fallen prey to the seductive logic of these rankings and warned us in dire tones that if we didn’t ramp up our patent numbers, we’d suffer on the technological front. I’ve cautioned against this myopic vision in a recent op-ed in the Hindu. This comes close on the heels of a recent post by…
“Frozen” broke most box office records. And turned out to be the highest grosser for Disney studios. And yet this maverick of a movie almost never came to pass. Until a creative set of screen writers decided that they would stray from the parent script …one conjured up more than a century ago by Hans Christian Anderson, the celebrated childrens’ writer. Anderson wove his basic story around the “Snow Queen”, an evil queen who unleashes her freezing power upon the…
In a decision that will go down as a landmark in the annals of global copyright jurisprudence, Justice Pradeep Nandrajog (along with Justice Yogesh Khanna) brings bold clarity to a much needed area in copyright law. Namely that when interpreting copyright defences, one has to be guided by their “purpose”. And not some fancy sophisticated four factor fair use/fair dealing test, notwithstanding that it emerged from arguably sophisticated common law courts. Pankhuri has already dealt extensively with the decision…