Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

.

Guest Post: Karnataka Goondas Act – A note on Legislative Competence

/ By / Copyright

A couple of weeks ago, we had an insightful guest post by Nehaa Chaudhari on amendments to Karnataka’s Goondas Act, a draconian legislation which seeks to allow preventive detention for some types of copyright violations. Today, we have a follow up post on that, that argues that the recent amendments are unconstitutional. This post is authored by Nehaa Chaudhari and Amulya Purushothama. Nehaa works on intellectual property/openness law and policy and the Centre for Internet and Society, while Amulya is […]

Guest Post: Karnataka Goondas Act – A note on Legislative Competence Read More »

Guest Post: More on the legitimacy of assumed consent

/ By / Copyright

Readers may recall the strange email that the news website Medianama received from Thomson Reuters recently. (We wrote about it here). In short, Thomson Reuters had sent Medianama an email stating that unless they explicitly denied them permission, they would assume permission to use and reproduce Medianama’s content. While Thomson Reuters has since sent in an apology to Medianama, the question of the validity of such an email prompted many of our readers to send in some very pertinent comments.

Guest Post: More on the legitimacy of assumed consent Read More »

Stalling scientific progress with chilly copyright censure

/ By / Copyright

[Apologies in advance for the long post. Though its been over a month since this development, I’ve seen it discussed very little anywhere else and thought it better to include as much as I could on it. If you too find this development troubling, please do share it on with your networks to help spread word of it]  Fact scenario:  Diego A. Gómez Hoyos is a 26 year old student, currently in Costa Rica studying for a master’s degree in

Stalling scientific progress with chilly copyright censure Read More »

SpicyIP Tidbit: All your content belongs to us (unless you opt out)!

/ By / Copyright

[Update to this post has been made below – regarding a provision in the Copyright Act which may in fact allow this!] Do you know of a copyright provision anywhere in the world that would allow your content (that you created), become an unrelated party’s property unless you sent them an email stating that you’d like to keep your copyright over it? If the letter that our friends over at Medianama received recently are of any indication, Thomson Reuters seems

SpicyIP Tidbit: All your content belongs to us (unless you opt out)! Read More »

Guest Post: Karnataka’s ‘Goondas Act’ – An examination

/ By / Copyright

Many of you may have heard about Karnataka’s new ‘draconian’ Goonda Act which seeks to bring within its ambit ‘digital offenders’ and ‘audio or video pirates’. In this very comprehensive guest post, Nehaa Chaudhari takes a look at this act and points out some severe problems with it. Nehaa is a Nalsar Law graduate. She works on intellectual property/openness law and policy at the Centre for Internet and Society,  New Delhi. [Note: Due to the examination of definitions in the Act, this

Guest Post: Karnataka’s ‘Goondas Act’ – An examination Read More »

SpicyIP Event: IP Week @ SG 2014

/ By / Event, Sponsored

We’d like to bring to our readers notice, IP Week @ SG 2014. Details are as follows: “The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore will hold its flagship IP Week @ SG 2014 event from 25 to 27 August. Created for C-suite executives, business leaders and IP thought leaders, the conference serves as a platform for the IP community to network and exchange insights on the latest trends and developments. In its third edition, IP Week @ SG 2014 aims to

SpicyIP Event: IP Week @ SG 2014 Read More »

SpicyIP Tidbit: Monkeying around with the Public Domain & Copyright

/ By / Copyright

IP enthusiasts across the world are having an absolute field day with the recent Wikipedia monkey copyright controversy! For those not in the know yet, even as some humans are having trouble taking pictures of themselves, or “selfies” as they are now known [Exhibit A: Usain Bolt fan’s selfie fails, as camera faces wrong way], back in 2011, a rather handsome black macaca nigra monkey based in Indonesia swiped a traveling British photographer’s camera and then proceeded to snap a whole

SpicyIP Tidbit: Monkeying around with the Public Domain & Copyright Read More »

Guest Post: Pran Kumar Sharma passes away

/ By / Copyright

Pran Kumar Sharma, the creator of the beloved Chacha Chaudhary Comics, passed away early on Wednesday morning at a hospital in Gurgaon. He was 75. The news of the demise of the creator of India’s very own original superhero, (Chacha Chaudhary, whose brain works faster than a computer!) was a hard hit to many of us, who have fond childhood memories of poring over these comics, oft over many a summer afternoon, or through long train journeys. With a career

Guest Post: Pran Kumar Sharma passes away Read More »

Sec. 144 & Patent Rules challenged, Delhi High Court asks Centre to reply

/ By / Others

The Delhi High Court yesterday issued notice in a Public Interest Litigation filed by our very own Prof. Shamnad Basheer, on the denial of requests for information under the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) by the Indian Patent Office (IPO). (See also: news reports carried by Mint, ET, LiveLaw, Legally India)  Readers would recollect the volte-face by the Patent Office in 2012, where they asked Sumathi Chandrasekharan and Prashant Reddy (former SpicyIP bloggers) to pay obnoxious amounts to get files relating

Sec. 144 & Patent Rules challenged, Delhi High Court asks Centre to reply Read More »

Ghost Post: Controllers stuck between a grant and a hard time?

/ By / Patent, Trademark

A few of our recent posts have focused on the executive power of the Patent and Trademark Office (IPTO). Spadika’s post on the order triggering this debate — (Intellectual Property Attorneys Association (IPAA) unsuccessfully challenged an order by the Trademark Registry pertaining to Pre-Registration Amendments of Trademark Application) —  can be found here. Shamnad then followed it up with his post that commended the trend of judicialising the executive, while also critiquing the reasoning in that order. We then had

Ghost Post: Controllers stuck between a grant and a hard time? Read More »

Scroll to Top