Punitive damages in IP cases are here to stay: Proctor and Gamble v. Joy Creators

/ By / Trademark

The case stands out owing to the importance given by the plaintiffs to levying punitive damages on the defendants. This is a marked departure from the importance given to injunctions especially temporary injunctions in recent times in intellectual property litigation. Intellectual property litigation in India is mostly confined to proceedings for temporary litigation. Once a temporary injunction is obtained, plaintiffs often abandon the litigation. We had previously posted on a talk by Justice Arjan Sikri on the same. We had […]

Punitive damages in IP cases are here to stay: Proctor and Gamble v. Joy Creators Read More »

Demise of Dr Vidya Sagar, Indian IP Legend

/ By / Uncategorized

With great sadness, we bring you news of the demise of Dr. Vidya Sagar, Senior Partner at Remfry & Sagar and doyen of Indian IP. He was 85 and passed away last afternoon. In many ways, he was the father of Indian IP, having built up one of the foremost IP law firms in the country, after having taken it over in 1973. Most of the leading IP professionals today were trained by Dr Sagar during their stint at Remfry

Demise of Dr Vidya Sagar, Indian IP Legend Read More »

The (Copyright) Remainders of the Day

/ By / Copyright

In the recent past, section 2(m) of the copyright amendment bill dealing with parallel imports has provoked a great deal of controversy. I reflect on this controversy in an opinion piece in the Mint and argue that the reasons offered by publishers for killing this provision are unconvincing. Thomas Abraham’s first piece titled “The Death of Books” that sparked off the debate is here. Rahul Mathan countered this doomsday prediction here. Pranesh’s elaborate views (including an exchange with Thomas Abraham

The (Copyright) Remainders of the Day Read More »

More IPRS golmaal?; Minutes of 37th Annual AGM revealed

/ By / Copyright

After much effort we’ve finally laid our hands on the minutes of the controversial 37th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS). This meeting was conducted on the 5th of January, 2008 and this was the meeting which completely amended the ‘Articles of Association’ governing the internal functioning of IPRS. The new ‘articles’ basically guaranteed that IPRS was controlled by a group of 8-9 ‘Big Music Companies’. Once IPRS was under control of these ‘big music

More IPRS golmaal?; Minutes of 37th Annual AGM revealed Read More »

MANJAL REMOVED FROM TRADEMARK REGISTRY – II

/ By / Trademark

In my earlier post, I had discussed the Order dated 21st January, 2011 which removed “Manjal” from the trade marks registry. “Manjal” is the Malayalam / Tamil translation for turmeric / haldi (in Hindi). The mark was registered by M/s Oriental Extractions Pvt. Ltd (hereinafter Oriental Extractions) in Class – 3 for “ayurvedic bath soap”. The rectification application was filed by Mr. S. Sivasubramanyan, Proprietor of M/s Divine Pharmaceuticals, Kollam before Deputy Registrar of Trade Marks. The Order noted that

MANJAL REMOVED FROM TRADEMARK REGISTRY – II Read More »

The Broadcast of World Cup Cricket matches and the SBS Act, 2007 – Did the Delhi HC get it right?

/ By / Copyright

The BS has carried a story on how the Delhi High Court has granted ‘John Doe’ interim injunction orders restraining 144 defendants from infringing on ESPN’s broadcasting rights in the ICC Cricket World Cup, 2011 since ESPN has bought the broadcast rights for the same. The Delhi High Court has also reportedly extended the injunction to un-named cable-operators who may be discovered during the course of the World Cup. The Delhi High Court has passed such order earlier in the

The Broadcast of World Cup Cricket matches and the SBS Act, 2007 – Did the Delhi HC get it right? Read More »

EU to be sued over maintaining secrecy in trade talks with India

/ By / Uncategorized

As Reuters reports here, EU is being sued over  secrecy as it has withheld documents on free trade talks with India. The WSJ blog reported that Corporate Europe Observatory, a left-wing advocacy group backed by Quaker organizations, said it was suing the European Commission for refusing to release details of its negotiating position in ongoing free trade talks with India. The letter published by CEOb is available on the WSJ blog link. I was unable to link it here. Apparently,

EU to be sued over maintaining secrecy in trade talks with India Read More »

Of missed deadlines and how (not) to kill a patent

/ By / Patent

[Warning: Long post] Two High Courts recently handled interesting questions of deadlines in patent prosecution: the Delhi and Madras High Courts dealt with the consequences of errors in recording important filing-related dates. Both cases involve one of India’s best known IP firms, Anand and Anand, who took their grievances to court after the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) refused to entertain their requests to condone the delays. Both decisions offer valuable lessons in how not to kill a patent application because

Of missed deadlines and how (not) to kill a patent Read More »

Controversial MoU between IPRS-PPL-IPI, dated 12 November, 1993 now available on our website

/ By / Copyright

Pursuant to our last few posts on the IPRS dispute, a source has passed on to us a copy of the controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Indian Performing Rights Society, the Indian Phonographic Industry & the Phonographic Performance Pvt. Ltd. We thank the source for this disclosure. We’ve briefly discused the ramifications of the MoU in this post over here. This is the MoU referred to by the Registrar of Copyrights during his attempted inquiry into the alleged

Controversial MoU between IPRS-PPL-IPI, dated 12 November, 1993 now available on our website Read More »

Summarizing the IPRS dispute – Information Filter

/ By / Copyright

I received a comment earlier this morning on the IPRS posts which basically informed me of ‘an information overload – filter failure’. In hindsight its does appear that the 6 posts on the IPRS controversy are slightly complicated. I have therefore briefly summarized the contents of the previous posts in this one post:(Image from here) The first post (available over here) explains how IPRS stopped collecting royalties for mobile ringtone royalties and how PPL instead started collecting royalties on behalf

Summarizing the IPRS dispute – Information Filter Read More »

Scroll to Top