Author name: Sumathi Chandrasekharan

This Trademark is Expressly Ours, says IE

/ By / Trademark

Trademark troubles have emerged yet again between two media groups in India — this time between The Indian Express (IE) and The New Indian Express (NIE), owned by different members of the family of the late Indian newspaper baron Ramnath Goenka. The New Indian Express, which has an extensive presence in southern India, has recently launched a weekly newspaper, The Sunday Standard, in New Delhi, which displays the brand of the mother paper. (Image from here.) According to this report …

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Darjeeling for Two in Kolkata

/ By / Trademark

By way of an update on the “Darjeeling” Geographical Indications (GI) case we reported on some days ago, we have uploaded a copy of the decision on our site. This is a very interesting decision, not just because it is the first ever by an Indian court on the infringement of a registered GI; but also because it may have significant implications on the protection of GI rights in the country in the times to come. We bring you a …

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Breaking News: Darjeeling still lounges in Kolkata, says HC

/ By / Trademark

In a decision likely to have interesting ramifications on the Geographical Indications (GI) marketplace in India, the Calcutta High Court today held that the word “Darjeeling” is not the exclusive right of the Tea Board, deciding in favour of the Kolkata hotel ITC Sonar and its Darjeeling Lounge. (Image from here.) The judgement, which is likely to go down as one of the earliest and most important cases dealing with GIs in India, was delivered by Sanjib Banerjee, J., who …

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‘Lawyers prevent open access to the TKDL’

/ By / Uncategorized

That lawyers are a universally disliked community is well known, and probably brings resigned smiles to several faces. But it is truly amusing to discover that this has what has prevented India’s “pioneering” Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) from opening up access to researchers. (Image from here.) Lawyers: Keep out! In a brief conversation recently, Samir K Brahmachari, the Director General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (the institution behind the TKDL) revealed that the TKDL would …

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The plagiarism parampara and the guru-shishya tradition

/ By / Copyright

A guru, according to Upanishadic interpretation, is the one who has the power to dispel darkness. Today’s post, about a guru and her student, comes from the district of Bhagalpur in Bihar. Those of you who know your modern history will not miss the allusion I try to draw to the Bhagalpur blindings of 1980 — one of the most horrific and shameful incidents of modern India. But I digress. And I also give you fair warning that this is …

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Registration In A Day — Trademark’s Believe It Or Not!

/ By / Trademark

Many readers seem to have misconstrued a post that ran yesterday on the blog, about a company/website apparently claiming to be able to obtain a trademark registration in 24 hours. It was certainly NOT intended to be an advertisement for filing services, as some believe it to have been. Quite the contrary, in fact. Advocate Devanshu Jain flagged the website by way of an email to the blog team (we owe him a hat-tip for the site link and the …

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SpicyIP tidbit: Designs status available online

/ By / Uncategorized

By way of a quick update on our last post on the newly-released Design Manual (which is still open for comments, by the way), we note that the Intellectual Property Office has made the status of Designs applications accessible online. The design applications search facility, which you can access here, is a bit like the “old” trademark search database, and requires inputting the design application number to obtain any results. If one does not have the application number handy, it …

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Of missed deadlines and how (not) to kill a patent

/ By / Patent

[Warning: Long post] Two High Courts recently handled interesting questions of deadlines in patent prosecution: the Delhi and Madras High Courts dealt with the consequences of errors in recording important filing-related dates. Both cases involve one of India’s best known IP firms, Anand and Anand, who took their grievances to court after the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) refused to entertain their requests to condone the delays. Both decisions offer valuable lessons in how not to kill a patent application because …

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‘Dive’ into more SpicyIP content with Dhiti

/ By / Uncategorized

Those of you who’ve been visiting our blog over the past fortnight or so (and not just receiving email updates or accessing posts via RSS feed), will have noticed a box that appears at the bottom of each page which gives you a list of recommended related reading from within our blog. Do try clicking on some of the topics there to see how the recommended readings change. This is the result of an impressive little widget called Dive that …

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IPO publishes Draft Design Manual; seeks comments

/ By / Uncategorized

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has released a Draft Manual of Design Practice and Procedure, for those design prosecutors among you. The Draft Manual can be downloaded and read here. The Manual promises much, including e-filing of design applications, open access to design file wrappers, and a 3-month turnaround time from filing to registration starting April 2011. The IPO notification requests interested persons to send comments and suggestions on the Draft to su[email protected] latest by 10 March 2011. (Speaking of …

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