Spicy IP Tidbit: Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority appoints New Chairperson

/ By / Plant Variety Protection

(Image taken from here)Many of the followers of Spicy IP will probably be familiar with the organization Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority (PPV&FRA). The activities of PPV&FRA have been reported beforehand here and here, including an interview with the erstwhile Chairperson of the organization, Dr. S. Nagarajan. During Dr. Nagarajan’s tenure, PPV&FRA has been considerably active and successful in promoting the Plant Variety Protection regime in India, by way of hosting several National Consultative Seminars, advocacy programs, […]

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Amendment to S.2(m) – Copyright Standing Commitee Report

/ By / Copyright

Continuing with my series on analysing the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s report on the amendments to the Indian Copyright Act, in this post, I will focus on the proposed definition of ‘infringing copy‘ under Section 2(m) of the Act (I apologise for the long gap between the two posts – been having trouble with my laptop the past few weeks) CURRENT PROVISION:Clause 2 (m) of the Act defines the expression ‘infringing copy’ as a (a) reproduction of a literary, dramatic, musical

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Patenting Delays ?

/ By / Patent

The abysmal delays in the granting of patents is not a new tale for India. A recent editorial in the Week puts forth the sorry state of the IPO and the sheer frustration of the inventors. The report suggests that while about 79,000 patent applications were pending with the Indian Patent Office (IPO), only 16,061 were granted patents in 2008-09. The delay has been largely attributed to the acute shortage of man-power at IPO and not surprisingly, the shortage is

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India, South Africa gain from J&J-generic deal, Patent Pool loses out

/ By / Uncategorized

Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Tibotec has granted multiple non-exclusive licenses for a new HIV-AIDS treatment to generic manufacturers including Hetero Drugs Ltd, Matrix Laboratories Ltd from India and Aspen Pharmacare from South Africa. The drug in question, rilpivirine hydrochloride (TMC278)  is still pending approval however. Tibotec would recieve 2-5% of what is received for the pills. The press release by Tibotec is available here.  The licensing allows the Indian generic companies to manufacture, market and distribute TMC278 in Least Developed Countries, Sub-Saharan

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Breaking News: TATA loses infringement challenge against Greenpeace

/ By / Trademark

The Indian-owned global conglomerate, the TATAs, have failed to convince the Delhi High Court that Greenpeace was guilty of defamation and trademark infringement in its use of the TATA logo in an online game. Justice S Ravindra Bhat of the Delhi HC refused to grant an injunction against Greenpeace earlier today. We are awaiting a copy of the order, and shall post if there are any significant observations by the court.The international environmental NGO, represented by Saikrishna and Associates, successfully

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Breaking News: Madras High Court admits petitions challenging the constitutionality of the IPAB and the Copyright Board

/ By / Uncategorized

Earlier this morning a Division Bench of the Madras High Court comprising of Chief Justice M.Y. Eqbal and Justice T. S. Sivagnanam, admitted two Public Interest Litigations (PILs) petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) constituted under the the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (& also the Patents Act, 1970) and the Copyright Board constituted under the Copyright Act, 1957. Both petitions are available over here and here. Image from here. While the first petition, challenging the

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CSIR Tempers Patent Aggression

/ By / Patent

This piece is slightly dated, but an interesting one nonetheless. Soma Das of the FE highlights CSIR’s changing patent culture from that of an aggressive patent filer to a more temperate and selective one. However, the numbers don’t really add up and there are some inconsistencies. While CSIR claims to have adopted such a temperate stance since 2007, its foreign filings went up in 2009, relative to its filings in 2008. The numbers for total foreign filings in each of

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Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights Workshop at CIPRS

/ By / Copyright

SpicyIP is pleased to announce an exciting opportunity for students interested in IP to participate in the first annual workshop on Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights, organised by the Inter-University Centre for IPR studies in association with the HRD Chair on IPR, Cochin University of Science and Technology, from March 10-12, 2011 . The theme for this year’s workshop is ‘Indian Copyright Law: A Social Perspective‘. The workshop has been organised keeping in mind the impending Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2010, with

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Patentability of traditional knowledge-capsicum this time

/ By / Uncategorized

The USPTO had introduced an information sharing program with the Government of India designed to prevent the improper patenting of traditional knowledge.  The information being shared expanded the class of publications under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(a)-(b), commonly used to deny a patent to an applicant. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) has been made accessible to the Examiners at the USPTO and as such the Examiners can reference and cite the TKDL information in an office action. It seems that

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Reciprocal Recordings: Copyright Charity Must End at Home

/ By / Copyright

In our submissions to the Parliamentary Standing Committee (tasked with examining the recent copyright amendment bill), we argued strongly in favour of strengthening our “reciprocity” provisions, an aspect first brought to light on this blog by Nikhil Krishnamurthy. The committee either missed the point altogether or refused to take note of it, as it does not find any mention in their otherwise sophisticated report. Barking dogs may never bite, but when peeved, they tend to bark a bit louder. And

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