SpicyIP Tidbits: Housefull producer to sue music label for defamation?

/ By / Copyright

According to two reports from Subhash K Jha which appear separately in the Bangalore Mirror and the Times of India, the producer of Housefull, which film’s soundtrack included a controversial reworked version of a 30-year old song, intends to sue the music label that claimed to have sold him the rights to the song for defamation. (SpicyIP’s regular “guest” poster and copyright expert Nikhil Krishnamurty brought the news to our attention — I’ve been a tad late in putting this […]

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SpicyIP Tidbits: Cipla serves legal notice on GWU; demands a written apology for events in relation to the GWU-CII Summit

/ By / Uncategorized

The Business Standard and the Economic Times have both reported that Cipla, one of India’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, has served a legal notice on the George Washington University (GWU) for allegedly allowing the GWU-CII summit to be used by Gilead to make representations, that were aimed at influencing sub-judice patent litigation pertaining to Tenofovir, the patent application of which was rejected by the Patent Office following a sucessfull opposition by Cipla. The appeal against the decision of the Patent Office

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Guest Post: An Appeal by Indian Civil Society to the U.S. President

/ By / Uncategorized

Indian civil society organizations have sent an open letter to President Obama, informing him of the USPTO’s and U.S. Embassy’s attempts in influencing the course of the debate on Indian patent law. This letter follows another letter sent by these civil society organizations to the Minister of Commerce, objecting to the GWU-CII seminars and which we have blogged about here. Avni Chari, a student of NALSAR, who has previously blogged for us, has sent us this concise summary on the

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Guest Post: Exhaustion and Copyright Law – A look at the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2010

/ By / Copyright

One of our regular commentators – Ms. Sneha Jain – a student of ILS, Pune has sent us this excellent guest post on the implications of the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2010 for parallel imports of copyrighted works. She has further nuanced her post by linking the discussion to the proposed definition of ‘commercial rentals’ in the pending Bill. For those of you interested in the concept of parallel imports, this post is a must read. Exhaustion and Copyright Law by

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Of south India, Handicrafts and changing types — GI trends

/ By / Uncategorized

If anyone’s glanced through the latest GI Journal, No. 33, available here, you will have seen that the number of applications for GIs in India has crossed the 200 mark. Of these, at least 120 have been granted already, according to this note that’s up on the IPO site. Since the IPO hasn’t put up an Annual Report in a very long time, and I was curious about some trends I noticed in the GI applications/registrations, I thought I’d do

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Article 300A of the Constitution: A constitutional right to ‘data exclusivity’?

/ By / Data Exclusivity

A. Introduction: Over the last few weeks there have been an increasing number of media reports on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that is being negotiated by the governments of the European Union and India. While there are several hurdles that are yet to be cleared before the signing of this Treaty that is expected to bring huge trade benefits to both countries, the focus in the recent past seems to be on the IP-related provisions that are allegedly going

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US Special 301 Report and a Not So Special Indian Response

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Tis that time of the year again! The US once again revels in its rather arrogant and high handed Special 301 mantle by condemning IP regimes that don’t quite look like their own. Pay homage to this years’ 301 report which reads thus for India: India India will remain on the Priority Watch List in 2010. India continues to make gradual progress on efforts to improve its legislative, administrative, and enforcement infrastructure for IPR. India has made incremental improvements on

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Special IP Courts in the offing?

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On World IP day this year (which we had blogged about here), several new initiatives, prgrammes, agenda were announced. Similarly, the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (Indian Group) and the Delhi High Court Bar Association hosted a short seminar in the premises of the Delhi High Court. The programme included lectures/talks delivered by some of the finest Judges in the country, and more than 250 lawyers, controllers, examiners etc., members of the Judiciary including several Judges were in attendance. As our

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Guest Post: R for Ranking

/ By / Uncategorized

(Image from here) Suchita Saigal, a name familiar to the Spicy IP readers, brings yet another bit of ‘spicy’ IP news tid-bit to the fore for us, that has been presented as follows: A recent interesting entry on the PatentlyO blog deals with ranking patent law programs in the US. As is evident from the title, “Ranking of Patent Law Programs for 2011: Perhaps Six Junk-Science Ratings Are Better Than One“, the post adopts the process of aggregation to give

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No stay on classic song in Housefull: Calcutta HC

/ By / Copyright

SpicyIP has breaking news that the Calcutta High Court today refused to grant an interim injunction to Anandji, one half of the famed Bollywood music director duo Kalyanji-Anandji, to stay the use of their song from Laawaris (1981) in Housefull (2010), which releases tomorrow. The petitioners, along with the heirs of the producer of the 1981 film, claim that the rights to the song rest with the original production house, Prakash Mehra productions. The filmmakers of Housefull, on the other

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