Trademark – SpicyIP

The $1 Oscar: Can Contract and IP Quietly Create Illusory Ownership?

May 7, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Copyright, Trademark

The Oscar statuette may look like a personal trophy, but legally, it is something far more controlled. Through a contractual regime supported by intellectual property considerations, the Academy has ensured that an Oscar cannot become an ordinary tradable asset. Soundarya Lakshmi K examines how the Academy’s famous “$1 rule” blurs the boundaries between contract, property, and IP law, while also questioning whether Indian courts would uphold similar restrictions on ownership and transfer. Soundarya Lakshmi is a PhD Research Scholar at […]

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Shooting The Second Suit: Castrol v Sonavane & The Application of Order II Rule 2

May 4, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Trademark

IP disputes rarely unfold in neat, linear ways, and Castrol v. Sanjay Sonavane is a case in point. Faced with a fast-evolving conflict spanning threats, raids, and a coordinated media campaign, Castrol had to navigate a tricky procedural question: one suit or many? In this post, Naman Singh examines the Delhi High Court’s answer and why its nuanced take on “cause of action” under Order II Rule 2 CPC carries significance well beyond the facts of the case. Naman is

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (April 27- May 3)

May 4, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Copyright, Geographical Indication, Patent, Trademark

[This Weekly Review is authored by Naman Singh. Naman is an LLB (Hons.) student at National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Having a background in music, film, and media, He enjoys all things at the intersection of IP and law.] The call for applications for SPARC Cohort 1 is now open! This week, marking the end of April, also saw a batch of interesting discussions that ranged from lapsed trademarks, generics production, the needed evolution of the GI tag

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Dead Marks, Live Assets – The Case for a Registry Supervised Auction of Lapsed Trademarks in India

April 30, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Trademark

India’s trademark register is quietly bleeding value. Each year, marks with real commercial recall lapse not because they’ve lost relevance, but because renewal deadlines are missed, erasing years of built goodwill from the legal record. In this post, Lakshmidevi Somanath argues that instead of letting these assets vanish, India should rethink its approach and create a system to recycle lapsed trademarks back into the market. Lakshmidevi Somanath is a Partner – Litigation & Strategy in Anand and Anand and former

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (April 20- April 26)

April 27, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Copyright, Geographical Indication, Patent, Trademark

After an exciting week of discussion on GIs, ambush marketing, and the right of publicity, here is a round-up of the week with the latest edition of the Weekly Review for April. This week featured discussions on the Delhi High Court’s orders in the Peruvian Pisco appeal and the Allu Arjun personality rights matter. We also had posts on ambush marketing and the IPO’s rejection of Dr. Stephen Thaler’s patent application for a DABUS-invented invention. Are we missing anything? Drop

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Crashing the Game, Not the Law: Ambush Marketing and IP Law

April 26, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Trademark

A very happy World IP Day to our readers! As the IPL frenzy returns, so does the battle for consumer attention, this time fought as much through witty notifications and real-time campaigns as on the cricket field, and raising familiar questions about the legality and limits of ambush marketing. In this post, Anooja Padhee and Jyoti Panigrahi argue that non-deceptive ambush marketing reflects creative competition and that IP law should protect rights without stifling humour, parody, and innovation. Anooja is

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

April 23, 2026 / By SpicyIP / Others, Privacy, Trademark

Building on Part I’s critique of the DHC’s doctrinal conflation in the Allu Arjun case, Part II of the post turns to a related concern: the Court’s failure to distinguish between vastly different forms of unauthorised use. In this post, Dr. Aakanksha Kumar explains how collapsing fan practices, commercial merchandise, and AI-driven misuse into a single category produces an overbroad and structurally flawed approach to personality rights. Dr. Aakanksha Kumar (She/Her) is an independent researcher and academic who also consults

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

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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AIR-1, Right of Publicity-0: Delhi HC’s CLATastrophic Mix-Up

April 20, 2026 / By Kartik Sharma / Others, Trademark

This post is co-authored with Dr. Aakanksha Kumar. Dr. Aakanksha Kumar (She/Her) is an independent researcher and academic who also consults with content creators and advises Chhattisgarhi music artists on copyright-related matters. Previously, she served as Associate Professor, Associate Dean, and Associate Director of the Centre for Post Graduate Legal Studies (CPGLS) at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS). Since 2019, she has designed and taught a self-created elective course across law schools titled Comparative Celebrity Laws: Personality, Publicity and Free

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (April 13 – April 19)

Entering the second half of April with a post on the ANI v OpenAI, judgment of which has been reserved by the Delhi HC. Can an entity that is no longer a registered copyright society continue to demand licensing fees? Post on PPL’s ongoing litigation. Another post on the Delhi HC holding that removing an original mark and replacing it with one’s own does not automatically amount to trademark infringement. Case summaries and IP developments from the country and the

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