Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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Academia struggles to pay up as Journal prices soar!

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What is “Open Access”? Explained by PhD comics In yet another story headlining publishing houses, India’s top science officials have expressed concern over not being able to afford subscriptions to international science journals, budgeted at Rs 500 crores for the 5 year period covered by the 12th five-year plan (2012-2017).  The issue is concisely captured in the quote in the LiveMint article here: ““I’ll try my best to get this (budget for journals) passed, though I doubt whether the Planning Commission […]

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First sale doctrine under threat in US

/ By / Copyright

image from here While Hurricane Sandy has shut down most of the east coast of US, one of the only official buildings still open in Washington DC on Monday was the Supreme Court, as they heard arguments in the Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons case, a case revolving around the extent of ‘protection’ that copyright owners should get.  Textbook prices, it appears, are a problem world over. It makes sense. Without getting into whether it is good policy or

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IP in the multiverse: Law of Superheroes

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The leading American patent law blog, Patently O, reminds us that even serious law folk can have a lighter side once in a while (though not often enough, I would say). James Dailey and Ryan Davidson, bloggers of Law and the Multiverse, have turned their blog into a book “Law of Superheroes” that will be a delight to all comic-geek lawyers. As excerpted from Patently O:  (T)he book answers many IP questions that may have vexed comic book readers: Does Batman’s

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Guest Post: Bayer-Natco decision TRIPS Compliant?

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The Bayer-Natco decision broke ground as the first compulsory license earlier this year, and last month Bayer’s appeal was dismissed by the IPAB. Dr Enrico Bonadio sent us a commentary he published in the current issue of the European Intellectual Property Review, questioning the TRIPs compliancy of the ruling. Dr Bonadio is a lecturer of IP and EU law at The City Law School University, London and was practicing as an IP attorney in top tier international firms for several years. His

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Defensive Patent Licensing: A way out of the Patent Quagmire?

/ By / Patent

[Warning: Long post that mostly reviews a paper describing a type of license which may reduce unnecessary patent litigation as well as promote an ‘open access’ approach. Actual review starts from below the dotted line. ] Who would’ve thought patent-wars could have become a topic of discussion amongst even those with traditionally no interest in ‘lawyery stuff’! Good or bad, one side effect that the Apple-Samsung fiasco has had, has been to turn the public’s attention span towards the topic

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India signs Nagoya protocol ahead of Hyderabad CBD meet

/ By / Biological Diversity

GoI yesterday announced that the Union Cabinet had approved the ratification of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, which India had signed in May, 2011. The Nagoya Protocol, as we’ve written before was a step in the right direction, but a very small one. India, along with other countries like Brazil, is considered to be ‘mega-diverse’ and the Nagoya Protocol is expected to benefit such countries the most – or more correctly, to protect these countries which are most

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WIPO defers PPI observer status

/ By / Copyright

“Member governments of the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday approved all but one application for international nongovernmental observer status at the UN agency: Pirate Parties International“. William New from IP-Watch brought this to the public’s attention yesterday in his piece entitled, “Delay Of Pirate Parties’ WIPO Observer Status Raises Questions.  This is indeed bound to raise many questions. There are currently about 250 members accredited with Observer status and a look at the eligibility requirements for the international NGO status that they

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ICANN set to change the topography of the internet

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Mr Arun Mohan had written a guest post for us back in 2011 when ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced they would liberalise the gTLD system. I am writing this post is to substantiate the developments of that announcement, but first to back up a bit and explain the background to this. (Warning: in analysing and predicting the growth of the internet, I may have used more space on the internet than our standard posts with this

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Guest post: Jannat 2 – Producers far from Angelic

/ By / Copyright

We bring you another exciting guest post by Kruttika Vijay on copyright issues arising from the movie Jannat 2. The facts of the case, Kapil Chopra v. Kunal Deshmukh, could well be the plot of any successful Hindi movie. [editor’s note: The case is available here] Spoiler alert! A young scriptwriter narrates script to a well known film house. The film house shows interest in the script. And then there’s silence. A year later, there are promos of a new

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Guest post: Whirlpool v. Videocon

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One of our former bloggers, and my former classmate Kruttika Vijay, has returned to us with a guest post on a topic that has not received much attention here. After graduating from Nalsar University in 2009, she worked at Anand & Anand for a few years, and has now just begun her LLM degree at Stanford University. Hopefully, she says, this will be the first of many more guest posts by her in this coming year. Pictured above: Not Whirlpool’s registered

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