SpicyIP Tidbit: Saregama loses copyright claim for 7 seconds before the Calcutta High Court

/ By / Copyright

Continuing its aggressive copyright enforcement, Saregama sued Viacom on 28th February, 2013 on the grounds that its latest production ‘Special 26’, which was released in theatres on 8th February, 2013 had infringed its copyright in the lyrics and music of the sixties songs ‘Mere Sapno Ki Rani’ (Queen of my dreams), which featured in Aaradhana. Apparently, ‘Special 26’ had a scene where one of the lead actors Anupam Kher, uttered about 4-5 words from ‘Mere Sapno Ki Rani’, over a […]

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Guest Post: Book Review – V.J. Taraporevala, Law of Intellectual Property (Thomson Reuters, New Delhi, 2012)

/ By / Copyright, Patent, Trademark

SpicyIP is honoured to bring to its readers, a guest post by Senior Advocate Arvind Datar and Advocate Ananth Padmanabhan, practicing advocates at the Madras High Court. The following post is an insightful review of Mr. V.J. Taraporevala’s recent book – Law of Intellectual Property (Thomson Reuters, New Delhi, 2012). Book Review – V.J. Taraporevala, Law of Intellectual Property (Thomson Reuters, New Delhi, 2012) Image from here The second edition of Shri.Taraporevala’s work on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has come

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Blocking order issued against six UK ISP’s by England and Wales High Court

/ By / Copyright

As reported by Managing Intellectual Property, on 28 February 2013, Justice Arnold of the Chancery Division of the England and Wales High Court decided a copyright case in favour of music companies against six UK internet service providers (ISP’s). The record companies claimed that their copyright was being infringed upon by certain websites and asked the Court to issue a blocking order against the ISP’s.  The applicable legal provision was Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Justice Arnold framed four questions which

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Film release strategies and anti-competitive practices in the Indian film industry

/ By / Competition Law, Copyright

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has begun its probe into the anti-competitive practices alleged by actor-producer Kamal Hassan against certain film distributors and exhibitors. The probe has been initiated in relation to the simultaneous direct-to-home (DTH) release of his latest blockbuster film, Vishwaroopam. It all began in December last year when the actor announced his plans to release the film through pay-per-view (PPV) on DTH platforms, a day before it’s theatre release. This hits directly at the exclusive window

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Compulsory Licensing is Not a Bad Word!

/ By / Patent

And with this telling statement, Justice Prabha Sridevan, Chariman of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) began a marathon seven hour dictation in open court, upholding India/s first compulsory license order (in the post TRIPS era) in favour of Natco, a leading generic manufacturer. Given that “compulsory licensing” has acquired rather malignant overtones in several circles (pun intended), it was only appropriate that the judge set the tone by beginning with this sentiment that will no doubt reverberate in the

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‘First set up the labs, then dream the Nobel’

/ By / Innovation

I had earlier analysed the ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, 2013’. I had inter alia noted that the policy does not focus on enhancing R&D facilities in universities. On the other hand, it intends to multiply inter-university centres “to enable a wide cross section of university researchers to access advanced research facilities and equipment which are otherwise not available in university environments.”   In this regard, I intend to introduce an interesting article in ‘The Hindu’ titled ‘First set up the

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Spicy IP Weekly review (March Week 1)

/ By / Uncategorized

Last week started with an interesting post by Anubha about the role of National Innovation foundation (NIF) in boosting frugal technology. She then went on to discuss how NIF helped a farmer, patent and commercialize a frugal technology developed by him. She concluded by noting that NIF launched in 2000, headed by Prof. Anil Gupta of IIM-A had assisted inventors in filing an impressive number of 555 patents.  This was followed by an analytical post by Prashant who discussed a

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December 2012: Controller’s decisions at the IPO

/ By / Uncategorized

In the month of December 2012 the Controller’s offices issued 84 decisions.  Out of these 84, 46 decisions were granted (including deferred, time allowed), 34 refused (including revoked, abandoned and withdrawn) and no file uploaded for the remainder (4).Some interesting decisions: There are three decisions related to divisional practice: 1251/KOL/2005; 1257/DEL/2007, and 3466/DEL/2005: All three are from different controllers, and yield a similar result.  1576/DEL/2006 is on application of sections 3(e), and 3(p). 106/DELNP/2008 is on application of section 3(d).

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Patents vs. Patients: Department of Pharmaceuticals issues draft policy on pricing of patented drugs

/ By / Patent

Earlier this week, the Department of pharmaceuticals (DOP) issued a draft proposal on price negotiation of patented drugs and has invited comments from stakeholders on the recommendations of the committee before the end of this month. This draft policy proposal couldn’t have come at a better time, especially since the IPAB decision on Bayer’s appeal against compulsory license(CL) issued for its Nexavar (First ever post TRIPS CL granted by India) is expected early next week.   The Parliamentary standing committee’s

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SpicyIP Tidbit: ViiV Healthcare collaborates with Medicines Patent Pool (MPP)

/ By / Uncategorized

Image from here Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announced the launch of a new collaboration with ViiV Healthcare – a joint venture between GlaxoSmithKline (76.5%), Pfizer (13.5%), and Shionogi (10%) – to facilitate greater availability of critically needed medicines for children living with HIV. ViiV Healthcare is the second research-based pharmaceutical business to join the Medicines Patent Pool, the first being Gilead Sciences. We blogged about the MPP here, here, here and here. As has been noted, MPP was launched in

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