DIPP notifies revocation of Avesthagen patent in Gazette; Patent Office announces new policy for TK related patent applications

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Image from here The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Government of India has officially notified, in the Gazette of India, the revocation of the controversial Avesthagen patent that we had blogged about over here, here and here. As we initially guessed, the revocation did take place under Section 66 of the Patents Act, 1970. The notification by the DIPP is quite curt, only stating that the patent was revoked because it was “generally prejudicial to the public”. The […]

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Stocktaking: IPAB’s performance over the years

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Nine years ago on September 15, 2003, the Government of India constituted the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) to hear appeals from Trade Marks (TM) and Geographical Indications (GI). In April 2007, the Board was vested with powers to hear appeals from the Controller of Patents. Headquartered at Chennai, the Board additionally holds sittings at Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. To get a real sense of IPAB’s performance thus far, Spicy IP filed an RTI application seeking information of number

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Patent agent examination: DIPP notifies changes in the patent agent exam rules

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Today, the patent office posted on its website, a notification issued by the DIPP on September 25, 2012 prescribing the rules for becoming a patent agent.  This notification is supposedly made in view of a publication in the gazette of India inviting comments.   “S.O. 2296(E):  Whereas, certain draft rules were published in exercise of the powers conferred by section 159 of the Patents Act, 1970 (39 of 1970), vide notification of the Government of India in Ministry of Industry (Department

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Tamil Nadu set to register Pattamadai Mats and Nachiarkoil Lamps as GIs

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(Images taken from here and here)It is now the turn of Geographical Indications (GI) to once again come into the limelight after a short period of absence. For the uninitiated, GI with respect to a product is defined as that aspect of the product that refers to a country/region/place as being the point of origin of that product. Typically, such a name conveys an assurance of quality and distinctiveness, which is essentially attributable to the fact of it having originated

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SpicyIP Weekly Review (November Week 1)

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In this week’s top story, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on November 02, 2012 revoked Roche’s Pegasys in a post-grant opposition filed by Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust. Pegasys is the first Indian patent to be granted on a pharmaceutical drug. The patent was revoked on  two counts: (a) that it was ‘obvious’ for a person skilled in the art and (b) that the patentee failed to prove that the invention was  more’efficacious’ than previously known substance, a requirement under Section 3(d) of the

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Debating the Business Standard’s analysis of the Avesthagen patent revocation

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Image from here The Business Standard recently carried apiece on the Avesthagen patent controversy where the Central Government (the DIPP) revoked a patent granted to Avesthagen, using a rather rare provision of the Patent Act, on the grounds that the patent was granted for ‘traditional knowledge’. The reason for invoking the rare provision was because the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, set up by CSIR and the Govt. had filed an opposition to the corresponding EPO patent filed by Avesthagen. You

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GWU – CII ‘Legal Education’ program set to make a comeback to India: Will it survive the criticism from the NGO + Cipla lobby?

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Image from here The U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), has announced on its website that it will be hosting, in December, 2012 the ‘8th Annual India Legal Education Program’, that is conducted jointly by the George Washington University (GWU) and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). The conference has usually been conducted on an annual basis ever since 2003, except for the last year when I don’t think it was held, subject of course to correction. The last edition of the

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Kerala loses its sense of proportionality, takes extreme steps to fight online piracy

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India has the third largest population of internet users and soon it could be the country with largest number of prisoners! For close to six months now, the Anti-Piracy Cell (APC) of the Kerala Police with the assistance of Mollywood’s new anti-piracy tracking software, Agent Jadoo, has been aggressively monitoring the cyberspaces to combat piracy. The software, developed by a Kochi-based JadooTech Solutions Ltd., detects the IP addresses of users dealing in pirated copies. The software assisted the Kerala Police

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President of Costa Rica Passes Executive Order Allowing Photocopying of Academic Materials. India, it’s time to wake up.

/ By / Copyright

“This opposition to the Intellectual Property Law is ideologically based and premised on a false choice. Photocopying for profit for academic use is authorized under Law 8,039.” – Laura Chinchilla, President of Costa Rica  Last week, after thousands of Costa Rican students gathered outside the legislature to oppose a law that could make it illegal to photocopy extracts from textbooks, the President of Costa Rica decided to clear the air with a presidential decree clarifying the exception extended to photocopying

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Breaking News: Pegasys Patent Invalidated by IPAB

/ By / Patent

In a major victory for public health advocates and patient groups, the IPAB (Intellectual Property Appellate Board) revoked the famous Pegasys patent (covering a new form of pegylated interferon) at the best of Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust, a patient group represented by leading counsel and renowned health activist, Anand Grover along with this associates Julie George and Pratibha Siva. As I’d noted in an earlier post: “Pegasus is an important case in many ways, not least of which is the fact

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