Overlaps in IP

A Personality Too Spiritual for Satire?

/ By / Copyright, Others, Overlaps in IP, Privacy, Trademark

I had underestimated how much of the personality rights space in India is one big, vague, wild west! The personality rights order passed by the Delhi High Court in favour of the plaintiff, Anil Kumar Tiwari (aka Aniruddhacharya Ji Maharaj) shows what happens when an already confusing jurisprudence continues to develop without guardrails: IP law protections are claimed for ineligible content; social commentary based on meme-culture collides with ambiguous private rights; and, doctrinal confusion continues to blur the scope of […]

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Ready, Set, Enclose? India’s Sports-IP Waiver and the Problem of Turning Play into Property

/ By / Overlaps in IP

The Government’s new fee waiver for “sports-related” IP registrations appears, at first glance, to be straightforward. But beneath the news lies a deeper question: what exactly is “Sports IP,” and what kinds of ownership, exclusivity, and control is the State choosing to subsidise through this policy? Aryan Agrawal argues that the waiver is significant not just as an innovation measure but as part of a broader movement toward the enclosure of sporting culture, fandom, and access. Aryan is a final-year

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From Blueprints to Bistro: Rethinking Culinary Creativity After Cryogas

/ By / Copyright, Design, Overlaps in IP

What happens when creativity is both functional and aesthetic at the same time? The Supreme Court’s decision in Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd., though rooted in industrial design law, raises a larger question about forms of expression that do not fit neatly within existing IP categories. Nidhi Jaiswal uses culinary plating as a lens to explore how copyright and design law may leave certain kinds of creative labour structurally under-protected. Nidhi is an LL.M. candidate at Rajiv

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Copyright Enforcement in the Gaming Industry: Key Takeaways from the University of Geneva’s 2026 IP Conference from an Indian Observer’s Perspective

/ By / Copyright, Design, Overlaps in IP, Trademark

As the global gaming industry evolves far beyond entertainment into a sophisticated IP ecosystem built on software, art, music, branding, and competitive digital economies, conversations on questions of classification, cloning, and enforcement are becoming increasingly relevant. Reflecting on his experience attending the University of Geneva’s 2026 IP conference, Dhritiraj Paul Choudhary explains how jurisdictions across the world are actively rethinking copyright enforcement and classification in response to the commercial and technological realities of modern gaming, while Indian copyright jurisprudence has

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Part I: Flower Nahi, Fire: Delhi HC Waters the Wrong Rights (Again!) 

/ By / Copyright, Others, Overlaps in IP, Trademark

Recent personality rights orders from the Delhi High Court continue to push the doctrine into uncertain territory, with the latest ruling in favour of Allu Arjun marking a particularly sharp turn. In Part I of the two-part post on the order, Dr. Aakanksha Kumar argues that by characterizing the likeness of the actor as “copyrights of the plaintiff”, the Court collapses distinct IP doctrines into an overbroad conception of “personality rights,” raising serious concerns for copyright and publicity jurisprudence in

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The SpicyIP TV Podcast SS Edn: Ep 09 with Dr. Kailash Nadh on Reimagining Copyright, Tech Sovereignty, Open Source, and Innovation

/ By / Copyright, Others, Overlaps in IP, Patent, Podcast

In the 9th episode of the SpicyIP Podcast Summer School Edition, it was a privilege to speak with Dr. Kailash Nadh, a major proponent of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in India, who many know as the CTO of Zerodha. It was a great learning experience for us as students to have him at the Summer School, where he took a session under the trees discussing Open Source software and technology sovereignty, nudging students to re-think IP in the

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Novenco v. Xero: Do IP Cases Get a Free Pass to Bypass Sec 12-A? 

/ By / Design, Overlaps in IP, Patent, Trademark

The recent decision of the SC in Novenco Building and Industry v. Xero Energy Engineering seems to have been well taken. Comments online have showered praised over the decision for striking the right balance between procedural lapse and substantive justice. Writing on this blog for over 2 years now, I have learnt one important lesson- the outcome must never shift one’s focus away from the reasoning.  To gauge how much off the mark reasoning in this judgement was, please read this- “the public

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Let’s IPsa Loquitur: The Personality Rights Debacle – Whose Face Value Is It Anyway?

/ By / Copyright, Overlaps in IP, Podcast, Privacy

Regular readers (and now, viewers!) would’ve seen the launch of our SpicyIP TV series with the Summer School edition, where we spoke with many of the fantastic faculty members who had come to generously spend their time with our summer school students. That series (still on-going, with more to come), is geared especially towards those who are interested in the state of legal education as well as various ways of approaching how to build one’s career in IP and related

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GUI and IP: Here, There and Everywhere!

/ By / Copyright, Design, Others, Overlaps in IP, Patent

Image from here The Calcutta High Court (CalHC) seems poised to resolve the issue of registrability of GUI under the Designs Act (Act) once and for all. In a recent order in Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH v. Controller of Patents (Erbe, IPDAID/22/2024), CalHC has appointed Adv. Adarsh Ramanujan as amicus curiae to assist the Court on a matter, which seems to involve questions on the registrability of GUI under the Designs Act (See Adarsh’s post). This comes at a time when

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Double-Dipping via Design? Why the Crocs Judgment on Trade Dress and Design Rights Wrongly Mixes it Up

/ By / Design, Overlaps in IP, Trademark

A division bench of the Delhi High Court recently passed a judgment addressing whether a remedy against a passing off allegation be sought for a design registered under the Designs Act. The judgement was passed in an appeal arising out of two orders of a single judge passed in Dart Industries v. Vijay Kumar Bansal and Crocs v. Bata (which was passed after clubbing together 5 suits), and relies extensively on a DHC 5 judge bench decision in Carlesber v.

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