Author name: Sreyoshi Guha

Sreyoshi is a law student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune. Her favourite thing about Intellectual Property Law is Copyrights. She can usually be found doing one of three things: dog-earing her favourite pages of her books, looking up a Zomato menu, or day-dreaming of the day she'll finally meet John Mayer. She doesn't have any notable achievements, except probably that one time when she encountered a crazy pigeon, and lived to tell the tale. Send her your thoughts at: [email protected].

SpicyIP Weekly Review (July 9 – July 15)

/ By / Others

Our thematic highlight for this week also doubles as the debut post of our First Scholar in Practice, Harshavardhan Ganesan. Through his post, Harsha attempts to revisit ‘publicity rights’ – a term he uses interchangeably with ‘personality rights’. Beginning with an introduction into the concept of publicity rights, he quickly moves on to his core argument: that publicity rights do not fit within the IP regime. He justifies this argument with the observation that Publicity Rights are lacking in several […]

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Copyright Society or Company? Indian IP’s Home Grown Identity Crisis

/ By / Copyright

Termed as one of our very own pet peeves, Indian copyright societies have been the subject of several of our posts over the years. True to that topical history, we would like to direct our readers’ attention to a development from March, this year. Having stayed under the radar for the most part, it hadn’t been picked up by media channels, until last week in a coverage by radioandmusic.com. The report, which is available here, helpfully notes, “Quietly and almost

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Real Icecream, Real Disparagement: Bombay HC Shuts Down Amul’s Advertisements (Part II)

/ By / Comparative Advertising, Trademark

[In Part I of this post, I had laid out the facts of the case and studied the viability of the claim of generic disparagement under law. I had also looked into one of the primary issues of this case – whether frozen desserts all contain “vanaspati/vanaspati tel.”] One of the contentions raised by Amul was that this was a case of comparative advertisement, which permitted puffery of its products. (Our posts on this subject can be accessed here.) I

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Real Icecream, Real Disparagement: Bombay HC Shuts Down Amul’s Advertisements (Part I)

/ By / Comparative Advertising, Trademark

Earlier this year, Amul found itself strapped in legal trouble when Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) sued them for disparagement. At the root of the dispute, were two advertisements comparing Amul’s “icecreams” to other “frozen desserts” – claiming that the former uses “real milk” while the latter does not. We had covered this over here, when the issue first hit headlines. Last month, a single judge bench of the Bombay High Court passed a comprehensive judgment on the matter (Suit (L)

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Exide India Settles 19-Year-Old Trademarks Dispute

/ By / Trademark

Last month, in a landmark development, Exide Industries (Exide India) entered into a settlement with US based Exide Technologies (Exide US) over the use of the disputed ‘EXIDE’ trademark. I call it a landmark development for two reasons – a) it is a decision that has put an end to a dispute, which has gone on for almost two decades and b) according to media reports, the terms of the settlement indicate that Exide US has effectively waived any right/

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Sugar Hero v. Food Network: Copyright Infringement of ‘How-To’ Food Videos

/ By / Copyright

In an interesting case from the United States, an independent food blogger/entrepreneur has sued The Food Network for copyright infringement. Upon perusal of the IPKat coverage of the issue including the complaint (linked in the same coverage and available here), the factual matrix supporting the claim becomes fairly clear. The Facts Sugar Hero is a website run by blogger turned entrepreneur, Elizabeth Labau. Through this website, she shares her innovative, self-created recipes in creative ways including videos, pictures, etc. This

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Two “Weddings” and a Passing Off Claim

/ By / Trademark

A week ago, Justice Gautam Patel authored a guest post for us. This was quite legendary and one of many firsts:  first sitting judge to write for us, first sitting judge to engage in a thought provoking dialogue on this platform, etc. However, it wasn’t the first time Justice Patel has given us food for thought, or even awed us with his judicial practice. (Our archives are studded with J. Patel’s brilliance, accessible here.) This, also, was nowhere near the

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An End to the Raabta-Magadheera Copyright Row

/ By / Copyright

Last week, I had covered the copyright controversy surrounding the upcoming Hindi film “Raabta” (over here). The producers of the movie had been sued by the Geeta Arts, the producers of the Telugu film “Magadheera” over alleged copyright infringement. I had also promised to provide an update as soon as new details emerge. Over the last two days, news reports have been flashing headlines that indicate a copyright victory in favour of Raabta. After reading a few of these reports and

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Is Patent Enforcement Anti-competitive? Delhi HC Expresses Some Caution!

/ By / Competition Law, Drug Regulation

The Roche: Biocon saga over Herceptin took a dramatic new turn recently. Before getting into the details, here is a short timeline for those interested (I have not included a list of all the suits filed, for the sake of brevity). The Timeline Roche sued Biocon and Mylan before the Delhi High Court, seeking to restrain their sales of a biosimilar of Roche’s breast cancer medication, Trastuzumab. Rahul carried an analysis of that order over here and here. In this

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Bollywood’s ‘Raabta’ with Copyright Infringement

/ By / Copyright

The upcoming hindi film ‘Raabta’ was recently slapped with a copyright infringement suit by the producers of the Telugu film ‘Magadheera’. (Interestingly, according to recent reports, Telugu writer, SP Chary has alleged that the story behind ‘Magadheera’ was copied from his book, ‘Chanderi’ – but we’ll pick up on this thread another time). Both films involve lovers who find each other in a second life (reincarnation and all that). Other similarities include parallel visualization of the two different “births” or

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