America Invents Act: an overview

/ By / Innovation, Patent

President Obama last Friday signed into law the America Invents Act (“AIA”) at a Virginia school.  The AIA is a serious overhaul of United States patent law in over 60 years.  The recent changes to the US patent law makes it more-in-sync with global patent laws, the changes are intended to bolster innovation and economic development.  There are large number of revisions in the AIA that seek to redress perceived problems with the previous law, reduce administrative and litigation costs, […]

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Natco’s Compulsory Licence: Professional Negligence?

/ By / Patent

I’ve been thoroughly perplexed over the last few days. Why on earth did Natco apply for a compulsory license? Particularly when the process is susceptible to considerable delays and it could be a while before they get a clear signal to go ahead and make generic copies of Bayer’s patented Nexavar. And even when the permission does finally come through, they have to part with some of the moolah in the form of royalties to Bayer. Wouldn’t it have been

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Patent issues precede UN High level meet on NCDs

/ By / Patent

For the first time since the General Assembly meet on HIV/AIDs ten years ago, the UN is having a ‘high-level’ meet to discuss health issues – more specifically the rising public health problem of non-communicable diseases from 19th – 20th September.  Non-Communicable Diseases or NCDs refer to the rising global problem of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes. According to the WHO, these account for over 63% of deaths (ie, about 36 million annually) about  in the world

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Issuing interim orders under S. 31 of Copyright Act

/ By / Copyright

The Delhi HC, in its recent judgment in Music Broadcast Pvt Ltd vs Super Cassette Industries Ltd, held that the Copyright Board could issue interim orders under S.31 even in the absence of an express empowering statutory provision. Barring certain lacunae, I must note that it is a fairly reasoned judgment. Summary of judgment Considering common law cases dating back to 17th century, the judgment rightly noted that the power to grant interim orders was firmly grounded in common law.

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EU Extends Copyright Protection for Musical Works

/ By / Copyright

An issue that regularly features in copyright reform debates is the issue of extending copyright terms for different works.  I had blogged earlier about the proposed amendment to the Indian Copyright Act for extension of copyright terms for photographs and principal directors, expressing concerns about copyright term extension in general. While the Indian amendments might have to wait a while, the European Union has left little to the imagination by adopting a directive that extends the term of copyright from

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Delhi HC’s Ruling on the ‘Guiding Principle’ of Public Domain & Fair Use

/ By / Copyright

(Image taken from here) Last month, the Delhi High Court had come up with quite an interesting interpretation of copyright in literary work and the concept of fair use on August 3, 2011. Facts: In this case, titled Syndicate of the Press of the University of Cambridge v. B.D. Bhandari & Ors. [RFA (OS) No.21 of 2009 and FAO (OS) No.458 of 2008], the Cambridge Press (Appellants) had alleged that the Respondents were publishing and selling guidebooks that contained illegal

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The Novartis Patent Intervention

/ By / Uncategorized

With the recent recusal in the Novartis patent dispute, one is not sure as to when a new bench is likely to be constituted. Will it take a month? Several months? A year? Will there be more recusals along the way, given that the threshold for recusals has sunk really low? Meanwhile, for those interested, here is a link to a draft of the intervention submission I intend to file before the Supreme Court. It still needs cleaning up, but

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Anatomy of NATCO’s compulsory license application

/ By / Patent

We had in two previous posts (here and here) informed our readers about NATCO’s compulsory license (CL) application for Bayer’s drug Nexavar.  The actual application for grant of the license is now available here.  This post looks in detail at the specific grounds taken in the CL application and does not cover any other material.  Biospectrum Asia edition has carried an excellent piece on this CL application and has included comments from officials from Bayer, NATCO and our very own, Shamnad.  In India, the drug

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Part II: Gandhi Trademark Opposition filed in Ecuador

/ By / Trademark

In continuation of our two part series on the Gandhi Trademark opposition filed in Ecuador, in this post we will look at the provisions in Ecuador law and the effect they are likely to have on the outcome of the opposition petition. We would like to thank Jeremy Phillips, founding member of IP Kat and Patricia Covarrubia from IP Tango immensely, for taking us through Ecuador’s trademark law and the provisions which would apply to this particular case. As stated

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In defence of Justice Dalveer Bhandari

/ By / Uncategorized

Let me begin this post by saying that I strongly disagree with the views expressed in the letter asking for Justice Bhandari’s recusal. In my honest opinion, with which some of my co-bloggers disagree, the entire episode has come across as an attempt to persecute an honest judge on the day the matter was supposed to be heard. How else is one to interpret a news report which is titled ‘SC Judge under attack from health activists’? The letter in

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