Basmati Developments- BGA appeal and impleading

/ By / Geographical Indication

The legal developments surrounding the conferring of GI status on Basmati goes years back. For a back story of the whole issue, Prashant’s post is available here. (A full list of all of our posts relating to Basmati is available here) A quick recap to provide context for the current development:-  The litigation relating to Basmati was triggered off in 2009 when the Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority (APEDA) applied for conferring GI tag on Basmati rice grown in Punjab, […]

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The Tobacco Plain Packaging Controversy 2.0

/ By / Trademark

Are you a smoker? Do you see the vomit inducing imagery to your left ? Do you think you’d feel like buying a cigarette box that looks like that ? No ? Well that’s how you know plain packaging works. (very long post follows) With its 2011 passage of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act(TPPA), Australia took a landmark step on the tobacco control front. It forced all tobacco companies to ensure their cigarettes are packaged in standard olive green boxes, with

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Cutting off the nose to spite the face: Tamil film industry to halt movie releases to “combat piracy”

/ By / Copyright, Others

In one of the most bizarre cases of copyright-maximalism we’ve encountered so far, it appears that the Tamil Film Producers’ Council has discovered a new solution to the problem of movie piracy: stop releasing movies altogether. At a meeting on Sunday, apparently, the Council came to the resolution that the only way to stop movie piracy was to halt movie releases for a three-month period. This is especially problematic, given that Tamil Nadu is one of the states that have

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SPICY IP TIDBIT: UN Special Rapporteur on impact of intellectual property regimes on the enjoyment of right to science and culture

/ By / Copyright, Others

The Special Rapporteur, in her report to the Human Rights Council, focused on the impact of intellectual property regimes on the enjoyment of right to science and culture, as enshrined in article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The report examines copyright from a critical but often neglected perspective of human dimension. [Note that the Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations. It is responsible for the promotion and protection of

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (2nd March – 8th March, 2015)

/ By / Others

SpicyIP Highlight of the Week! This week’s highlight was Mathews’ post on Utility Models, and the costs and benefits of setting up sui generis UM protection in a country like India. Mathews took on an article written by the former Registrar of Copyrights, Mr. Zakir Thomas, which summarily rejected the idea of any sort of protection for Utility Models, or Petty Patents. Mathews argues that UM protection merits serious consideration, at the very least, before it can be discarded. He then posits three possible arguments that could be

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TM Agent Examination writ petition-order

/ By / Trademark

Last month, we brought to your attention the problems associated with the Trademark Agent Exams in India and the writ petitions filed with respect to the same.The Madras HC has come out with an order on the writ petition filed by Mr. Muralidharan. The explanation given by the respondents for not conducting the Trademark Agent Exam post 2010 was that firstly, there were only 35 applicants for the examination and secondly, there was limited resources and manpower to conduct the response. The HC

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Breaking News: IPAB (Key Provisions) Struck Down as Unconstitutional!

/ By / Patent

And at long last, the wait is over! News just trickled in this morning from Chennai that we won our first round against a constitutionally infirm Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), India’s specialised IP tribunal. Readers may recall that in early 2011, I’d filed a writ petition before the Madras High Court challenging the constitutionality of the IPAB. Although this was filed in my name, a large part of the work was done by the prolific Prashant Reddy and an

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Make in India Seasoning added to Nitto Denko ‘Patent Office Reforms’ Case

/ By / Patent

The Nitto Denko case, addressing reforms in the patent examination process, has taken on a ‘Make in India’ flavour – The second committee appointed on the instructions of the High Court has suggested that the Patent Act be amended to allow for expedited patent examination if the applicant has started manufacturing the invention in India or undertakes to start manufacturing in India within two years from requesting expedited examination. In October 2014, Delhi High Court delivered a pathbreaking decision suggesting

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More Submissions on the Draft IP Policy

/ By / Others

In a few previous posts, we’ve taken a look at some critical comments that have been submitted to the DIPP, on the draft IP policy prepared by the IP Think tank – see Prof. N.S. Gopalakrishnan and Dr. T.G. Agitha’s views here, and some comments by other academics and civil society here and here. It so happens that several of the other comments submitted are currently available online. As they haven’t (yet?) been made available on the DIPP website, I

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Is ‘Utility Model’ worth considering?

/ By / Innovation, Others

[*Long post] Mr. Zakir Thomas, former Registrar of Copyrights, penned an article in Deccan Herald criticizing ‘Utility Model’ (“UM”) which was, in fact, proposed by the recently released Draft National Intellectual Property Policy. According to him, “the draft policy believes that the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector has a large number of inventors having potential IP who can benefit only by introduction of a new law on UMs. This claim sounds appealing, but is not supported by any

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