A short synopsis of an interesting decision on patent law by a court in Bombay: Speaking Roses International Inc. v. Controller-General of Patents & Anr.(Misc. Petition No. 13/2006) Decision date: 12th February 2007 • Petitioners applied for a patent on 19.09.2002 for the method of providing an image on an organic product (flowers) however, the Respondent rejected the application by an order dated 19.04.2006.• The petition came up on board normally but the Respondents failed to appear despite service and…

I was not really expecting any comments on the short note I posted last week on § 79 of the IT Act and Pawan Duggal’s comment regarding YouTube’s liability. However, I did get an interesting observation by email from Mathew Chacko, an intellectual property lawyer in Delhi. I quote from his email: “You Tube’s liabilities are probably going to originate in copyright law and a theory of network service provider liability under copyright law will probably be based on theories…

YouTube was recently reported as having removed world cup cricket video clips after the ICC accused it of copyright infringement. In the brief report, Pavan Duggal was reported as having said that “under Section 79, IT Act, network service providers (like Google, You Tube) shall be liable for all third party data or information made available.” The statement may be a mis-quote or a mistake of law. In either event, section 79 of the IT Act actually states the exact…