Author name: Sumathi Chandrasekharan

In continuance of its efforts to bring transparency to its functioning and sevices, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CG) has announced that the trademarks database will soon become openly accessible and freely available to the public for search and related services. In a notification dated 29 September 2010, the CG has stated that on the finalisation of the draft notification published in the Gazette earlier in the month (which we posted on here), the services relating to

One would not ordinarily expect a discussion on the evidentiary value of photocopied documents to reach the highest court of a country. As it turns out, this just happened in the world of trademarks, where the Supreme Court of India, in a sound judgement, returned a trademark infringement case to a lower court to accept the original versions of the photocopies as additional evidence and decide accordingly. (Image from here) [Warning — Long Post] The curtain-raiser Shalimar Chemical Works Ltd.

Prashant’s excellent post some days ago covered in comprehensive fashion the build-up to the trademark amendment bill 2009, and the poor strategic calls that India may have made in pushing this bill through. Readers may also, in this context, recall a previous, equally insightful guest post on the challenges of the amendment bill, and implementation concerns that India ought to have looked at. There’s little point in speculating over lost opportunities, though. And so, instead we have what I like