Battleground shopping: Big Pharma versus Indian Patent policy

/ By / Patent

On March 13th 2013, in a hearing before the US House of Representatives, Pfizer’s Chief Intellectual Property Counsel Roy Waldron derided India’s pharmaceutical patent regime stating amongst other things that India has ‘routinely flouted trade rules’, discriminating in favour of domestic generic companies, and is abusing the compulsory license system. Waldron went on to recommend that the US government use ‘every available bilateral and multilateral fora’ and ‘review all available policy tools’ in order to send strong signals to the […]

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Decriminalizing Defamation – Are Sections 499/500 of the IPC constitutional?

/ By / Uncategorized

Sending a person to JAIL or even tagging him as an ‘ACCUSED’ for comments which may or may not be defamatory, in this day and age, appears to be ridiculous!  We are all aware that freedom of speech and expression is not absolute and is subject to ‘reasonable’ restrictions. Defamatory speech is one such restriction prescribed under the constitution. Therefore, in order to curb speech that is defamatory, the restriction imposed should be ‘reasonable’. In the case of Chintaman Rao

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Artists unionize and register copyright societies to avail of benefits under the Amended Copyright Act.

/ By / Copyright

The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 brought about a number of changes to Indian copyright law. One significant change was allowing the authors of a work in cinematograph films, which includes singers, composers, lyricists etc, to claim an equal share of the royalties earned by producers through utilization and exploitation of their creative product. This was contrary to the industry practice till then, which involved authors of songs assigning away their copyrights to the producers for a one-time lump sum payment.

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Indian publisher threatens blogger with 1 billion $ defamation suit: The Streisand effect?

/ By / Uncategorized

Disturbing trend we have here with defamation law suits being used to quell free speech and public participation! Last year Shamnad was sued by NATCO for alleged defamation (see his response here) and more recently one of our student bloggers Aparajita received a notice from Times Publishing House threatening legal action for alleged defamation. Prashant’s incisive blog post on this can be accessed here.The story as well as Shamnad’s delightfully sarcastic response to the legal notice served by Times publishing

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Haldiram Bhujiawala: IPAB Order

/ By / Trademark

Image from here The IPAB on April 26, 2013 ordered for the removal of trademark registration made in favour of Kolkata based – Haldiram Bhujiawala. This order ended a long standing family dispute over the use of the trademark Haldiram Bhujiawala. (for IPAB order see here).  Factual Matrix  The trademark ‘Haldiram Bhujiawala’ was coined in the year 1941 by Mr. Ganga Bishan (whose nickname was Haldiram), for his business – the manufacture and sale of sweets, papads etc. Initially, the

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Guest Post: Impugning novelty the Novartis way

/ By / Uncategorized

Carrying on with our lively debate on the merits of the Supreme Court’s judgement in the Novartis case, Siva Thambisetty has sent us this reply to Darren’s rejoinder, which we had published over here. This is the first time we’ve had such an extended debate on the blog and I hope we can have more such debate on other aspects of IP law.  For the earlier exchange between Darren and Siva, please click over here, here and here. Impugning novelty

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Comparative Advertising: Reckitt Benckiser trumps Hindustan Lever Ltd again

/ By / Comparative Advertising, Trademark

The Delhi High Court in yet another order granted Reckitt Benckiser an interim injunction against Hindustan Lever Ltd (HUL). This is the second order granted in favour of Reckitt Benckiser against HUL recently (read the first one here). The dispute may be traced back to Reckitt Benckiser’s (plaintiff’s)TV commercial and print campaign which compared the germ killing capabilities of its product Dettol Healthy Kitchen and HUL’s (defendant) Vim Liquid. These advertisements supposedly contained truthful statements about the germ killing capabilities of the

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The (Great) Gatsby Files: IPAB decides in favour of Fem Care Pharma Ltd.

/ By / Trademark

The IPAB recently decided a trademark dispute with respect to use of the tradename ‘Gatsby’. The dispute here though was in relation to perfumeries and cosmetics products, not the recent cinematic reproduction of the novel ‘The Great Gatsby.’  Mandom Corporation, a Japanese company filed a rectification petition in 2005 to remove the trademark registration of Gatsby. The trademark was registered by a well known Indian cosmetics company Fem Care Pharma. The petition was filed on the grounds of alleged non-use

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (May 4th Week)

/ By / Uncategorized

SpicyIP saw a very busy week with many interesting developments – Image from here The week started with Sai’s insightful post on Microsoft v Motorola. The 207 page judgment of Judge James L Robart on fixing the FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) royalty rate, is significant as its sets out, for the first time, a framework for negotiating a FRAND royalty rate. The opinion adequately addresses the problems of patent hold-up and royalty stacking plaguing the industry and has been

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Comparative Advertising: Delhi HC (Reckitt Benckiser v. Hindustan Lever Limited)

/ By / Comparative Advertising, Trademark

Hindustan Lever Limited(HUL) aired a television commercial which depicted a child being sick because of the alleged use of Dettol as an antiseptic liquid in bathing water whilst promoting the superiority of Hindustan Lever Limited’s Lifebuoy Soap. The plaintiff, Reckitt Benckiser filed a suit for an ad interim injunction against the telecast of the television commercial of defendant Hindustan Lever Limited’s Lifebuoy Soap, which was disparaging and denigrating the reputation and goodwill of the plaintiff’s product Dettol in the commercial

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