SpicyIP Tidbit: Need for amending the Trademarks Act?

/ By / Trademark

This article chronicles the remarks of senior officials citing the advantages of amending the Trademarks Act for accession to the Madrid Protocol. These changes are to be incorporated in the Trademark Amendment Bill currently with Parliament. The advantages of such amendments will be as follows: 1. Allowing Indian companies to apply for registration in multiple destinations from their local offices.2. An 18 month deadline will be applicable for Indian companies applying for trademarks.3. Global protection under the Madrid system can […]

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Will the real NGO please stand up?

/ By / Uncategorized

The Delhi High Court in its recent March 19thruling on the Roche-Cipla issue had lamented about the fact that it did not have access to any accurate information as to how many patients were affected by lung cancer and how many of them actually had access to Roche’s drug. A lack of quality empirical evidence has been a lamentable feature in all policy debates regarding patents in India. Three days after this judgment of the Delhi High Court a leading

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Patents vs Patients: Cipla’s Victory and the Evolution of New “Compulsory Licensing” Norms

/ By / Patent

The verdict is finally out and we had blogged on the Roche vs CIPLA controversy here, here and here. More recently, Prashant did a short note on Justice Bhat’s judgment here. Extremely well researched judgment—I’m guessing that the judge was helped by a very bright law student (as law clerk). The influence of law clerks on the Indian judiciary is beginning to be felt and will make an excellent topic of research for those of you willing to investigate this

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Big Pharma and neglected diseases

/ By / Uncategorized

The BS and the Mint recently carried stories on Pfizer’s announcement that it will focus its R&D efforts on diseases affecting developing countries such as India. As of now Pfizer seeks to target diseases such as cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders and inflammation, with special emphasis on the regional characteristics of the ailments. Pfizer will also work on certain vaccines and other unmet medical needs. However it remains to be seen whether Pfizer actually translates its words into actions or whether

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SpicyIP Tidbit: BBMP seeks to patent construction technology

/ By / Uncategorized

The Hindu reports that the BBMP or the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike is seeking to patent a novel technology which allows it to build an underpass for a fraction of its previous cost. While the usual cost of an underpass is usually Rs. 20 crores the novel technology would reduce costs to a mere Rs. 1 crore! The other huge advantage of these underpasses is that they take significantly lesser time to construct – a huge advantage in congested cities

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Frontline’s interview with Dr. Baltimore

/ By / Uncategorized

The Frontline one of India’s last few leftist news magazines’ (The cover story last month was a tribute to the ‘Living Legend‘- Castro, the week after that the cover story was an attack on the ‘Neo-liberal policies‘ of the UPA Govt.) carried a superbly detailed interview of Nobel Laureate David Baltimore. Dr. Baltimore shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco at the young age of 37. At the time, Baltimore’s greatest contribution to

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SpicyIp Tidbits:Google launches Open Social Foundation

/ By / Innovation

The Open Social movement that was launched in November last year provides a common mechanism for developers to easily hook into many different social networks and extend their functionality. To further this initiative, Google has teamed up with Yahoo and My space to form the Open Social Foundation, a ‘non-profit, private foundation dedicated to the sustainable and open development of the Open Social initiative and related intellectual property.’ Open Social Foundation will be structured to include both corporate and individual

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Commercial Success v. Public Interest: Publicising Clinical Trial Data

/ By / Patent

Someone pointed out an extremely interesting article by Sarah Hiddleston in The Hindu to me. The article deals with striking that important balance between publicising information from clinical trials and a company’s own commercial motive. While believing that the former outweighs the latter, the article states several relevant questions through various examples. I reproduce the article below (do go through portions highlighted that I found to be an eye-opener.) “ Does putting full sets of clinical trial data in the

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SpicyIP Tidbits: Chrysler-Mahindra in Jeep-fight

/ By / Trademark

Auto major Chrysler’s South African arm has complained against a local ad run by Mahindra & Mahindra, which uses its automobile marquee “jeep”, saying it owns the trademark to the world’s oldest sport utility vehicle of World War II vintage. An agency report on Sify says that “The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (Asasa) is looking at the matter even as Mahindra and Mahindra says it used “jeep” with a lower case to denote the generic name for the

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Pharma MNCs approach the DGCI: To take on the Patent office together

/ By / Patent

Citing the Cipla scenario as an example (and in light of the judgment that has already been discussed by SpicyIP), Pharma MNCs through bodies such as the Organisation of Pharmaceuticals Producers of India are all set to urge the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to better co-ordinate with patent offices across the country. The Director General of the OPPI, Tapan Ray. has also been reported to have stated in great detail that the reason for the Cipla case in

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