Swaraj Paul Barooah

Non-traditional trademarks, the rarity that they are, are always interesting to study. Kiran Mary George brings us a post on possibly one of the rarer of these rare breeds – Smell marks. After examining the Indian law, the post goes on look at the EU and US position as well. This is Kiran’s 2nd entry to our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series. You can view her previous post on the iPhone v. iFon conflict here. [Readers interested in finding out more details about our…

Trademark

Guest Post: An uncertain road lies ahead for ‘Burger King India’

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 7, 2015

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Utkarsh Ravi, a 5th year student of RMLNLU, Lucknow, brings us his first entry to our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series with this post looking into the on going Burger King trademark controversy in which it currently appears that the US fast food chain may just need to change its name if it wishes to continue operations in India! Read on for more. [Readers interested in finding out more details about our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series can click here.] An uncertain road…

Trademark

Guest Post: The Equitable Dimension: Full Bench on Registration Invalidity Pleas in Trade Mark Infringement Suits

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 6, 2015

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A couple of years ago, the Bombay High Court, in Lupin Ltd vs Johnson & Johnson, referred to a Full Bench, the question of whether at the interim stage, courts are allowed to examine the validity of a trademark. Near the end of December, 2014, the Full Bench resolved this query and we’re happy to bring you a guest post by Aabhas Kshetarpal examining this decision. While reflecting on this decision, he also opines that it potentially suffers from certain legal…

Trademark

Guest Post: The iPhone v iFon conflict

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 6, 2015

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Our Fellowship applicant series heats up with a surge of entries closer to our deadline of January 16th! In this post, Kiran Mary George, a 2nd year student at Indian Law Society’s Law College, Pune, brings us this interesting post looking through some of the issues that have arisen in Chennai based iVoice enterprise’s challenge to Apple’s iPhone trademark. This is Kiran’s first entry to our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series. [Readers interested in finding out more details about our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series can…

Patent Traditional Knowledge

Guest Post: Barriers to Recognition and Unheeded Warnings: The TKDL Saga

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 5, 2015

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In continuation from his previous post titled “Questioning the Fallacy of a Closed-Access TKDL“, in this post, Balaji Subramanian puts forward some well thought out structural and legal critiques of the TKDL which he opines has rendered its usage sub-optimal. This 2 part series is Balaji’s first entry to our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series. [Readers interested in finding out more details about our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series can click here.] Barriers to Recognition and Unheeded Warnings: The TKDL Saga By: Balaji Subramanian…

Patent Traditional Knowledge

Guest Post: Questioning the Fallacy of a Closed-Access TKDL

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 5, 2015

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Balaji Subramanian, a 2nd year student at Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, brings us an excellent 2 post series on issues relating to the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). In this first post, he examines the closed nature of the TKDL and argues that keeping the TKDL closed will prevent it from reaching its full potential. In his second post, he goes on to examine other structural and legal critiques of the TKDL which may be preventing its optimal usage….

Privacy Trademark

Guest Post: Cricket, Death and a Trademark!

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 4, 2015

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As many of our readers would have recently noticed, the cricketing world and social media in general was abuzz with tributes after the recent unfortunate demise of Australian cricketer Philip Hughes. The phrase “63 not out” was used in many of these tributes, both on social media as well as on various memorabilia. In response to this, the Australian Cricket Board has recently decided to trademark the phrase “63 not out”. As his first entry to our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series, Atharva Sontakke, a…

Guest Post: IPRS, Indian Railways, & Rabindrasangeet (!)

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 3, 2015

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Prashant Reddy, our most prolific blogger till date, takes a step out of blogging retirement to bring us this timely guest post on a curious development at the Indian Railways. It appears that IPRS, the copyright collecting society (or perhaps more appropriately, “company”, as they’ve also claimed), is trying to collect hefty royalty amounts from Indian Railways for playing Tagore’s music and other classic Bollywood melodies – the problem being that much of this is already in the public domain! This isn’t…

Innovation Others

New year wishes: Let’s all contribute towards beautifying the IP landscape

by Swaraj Paul Barooah January 1, 2015

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The SpicyIP team would like to wish all our readers a very happy and prosperous new year!! As we look back on the year that was, the blog has seen a very spicy year! From welcoming in a terrific new bunch to the team, to hearing words of praise for the blog from Amartya Sen, to finding SpicyIP being cited by major newspaper across the world and even (at least) one news channel! And of course – 2015 will be the year…

Innovation Patent

Guest Post: Innovation in the time of SEPs & FRAND licensing

by Swaraj Paul Barooah December 31, 2014

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As his first entry to our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series, Kartik Chawla brings us an interesting post looking at the smartphone patent wars from an innovation perspective. He says a disruption in the smartphone sector may help overcome some of the issues that are cropping up with all the SEP and non-SEP related licensing trouble. Kartik is a 3rd year student from Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad and has written some guest posts for us earlier here. [Readers interested in finding out more…