Larry Lessig on Anti-Corruption: Lessons For India

/ By / Uncategorized

Some of you may already know that the cyberlaw guru Larry Lessig (of the creative commons fame) decided his shift his focus from cyberlaw/copyright to anti-corruption. I suspect this decision came as a result of the Supreme Court decision that copyright extension for Mickey Mouse was perfectly constitutional–despite Larry’s all out war against the extension and his powerful arguments in court that this was unconstitutional and bad policy. I am not entirely sure if the “constitutionality” question is an easy […]

Larry Lessig on Anti-Corruption: Lessons For India Read More »

Is the Indian drug industry scared of the NPPA?

/ By / Uncategorized

For all you bleeding hearts out there pining away about pharma companies over-charging on all their drugs here’s some good news. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has become rather active over the last few months – so much so that the drug industry was seriously contemplating moving the judiciary to seek a reprieve. UPDATE: They actually did move the Delhi High Court for some relief and the Court actually asked the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers to look into

Is the Indian drug industry scared of the NPPA? Read More »

Tarceva: Following the Glivec path.

/ By / Uncategorized

Following closely in the footsteps of the Novartis ‘Glivec’ battle, the validity of Section 3 (d) and the grant of compulsory licences seem the talk of town this time around in the Pharmaceutical industry. Our readers will remember the recent post on the Roche-Cipla Row. Generating interest and raising several eyebrows, CIPLA’s latest move to ask the Court to revoke the 2007 patent granted to Roche’s TARCEVA, again hinges a great deal on the pricing of the drug as well

Tarceva: Following the Glivec path. Read More »

Chikan to be only from UP.

/ By / Uncategorized

There’s good news for the 100,000 artisans in UP working on chikan embroidery as the same will soon be eligible for protection as a GI. The application with the GI Registry at Chennai has been filed. This is also good news for those trying to promote Indian handicrafts abroad as 56% of the exports of the country come from UP. A figure which will probably rise with the protection being given to chikan work. The whole article may be found

Chikan to be only from UP. Read More »

Music concerts in anti-piracy mode

/ By / Copyright

Readers might recall this post on bootlegs of Indian music concerts. Although I spoke only of audio recordings in the post, there is no ignoring the fact that video bootlegs are gradually getting popular as well. For example, I suspect there might have been several mobile phones being waved in the air in the recent Iron Maiden gigs… The same thing is catching on in Indian classical music (ICM) as well, although not with the same fervour, probably because of

Music concerts in anti-piracy mode Read More »

Spicy News: UK Trademark Office Invalidates "MASALA"

/ By / Trademark

Ilanah Simon, who teaches at UCL, London and is one of the bloggers at the internationally renowned IPKat blog brings us this extremely spicy news: ” The word mark MASALA was invalidated by Mr Hearing Officer Foley. He found that the sign, a constituent verbal component of various Indian spice mixtures, was both descriptive and customary in the trade for“cooked vegetables” in the Class 29 specification, “preparations made from cereals” in the Class 30 specification, and “foodstuffs comprising or made

Spicy News: UK Trademark Office Invalidates "MASALA" Read More »

A step ahead. A step behind.

/ By / Uncategorized

The Motion Picture Association’s Operation Blackout has resulted in the arrest of 117 people in India. In Australia 426 burners have been seized along with 661,411 pirated optical discs ; In China 211 raids have been conducted and 676,384 pirated optical discs seized and similar statistics can be quoted for Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand. The operation targeted the illegal recording of movies once again and also attempted to spread awareness regarding piracy. Although the result of this

A step ahead. A step behind. Read More »

Tiger Trademark dispute comes to a head

/ By / Trademark

The trademark dispute between Britannia Industries and French dairy and beverages giant, Groupe Danone is reaching a crucial stage as the matter is expected to come up in Court in Singapore early next week. The parties have the option of reaching a settlement at a pre-trial conference or going in for a full trial. The conflict is around the attempts of Danone [which holds a 25.5 per cent indirect stake in Britannia through a holding company Associated Biscuits International Holdings

Tiger Trademark dispute comes to a head Read More »

SpicyIP Posts and Subscribers: Some Interesting Statistics

/ By / Uncategorized

I just found out that we’ve completed about 350 posts now–since the first post in October 2005, when the sprawling corn fields of Illinois, Champaign forced me to keep boredom at bay by taking to blogging… Incidentally, we’ve also acquired an email subscription base of about 350 subscribers—perhaps one extra subscriber for each post that we put out!! If you know of any friends/colleagues interested in subscribing, please refer them to this post, which explains how to subscribe. It also

SpicyIP Posts and Subscribers: Some Interesting Statistics Read More »

Roche vs CIPLA: The Final Day…

/ By / Uncategorized

Apologies for the delay in bringing you the latest on this dispute (the court hearing on the 31st of Jan), as I’d been travelling. But thanks to Taapsi Johri and Jay Thareja for sharing their excellent notes with me–it almost felt like I was sitting in court and watching Singhvi take a shot at rebutting Jaitley’s arguments. As many of you may have heard, the court reserved judgment and it is likely that we will see a ruling on this

Roche vs CIPLA: The Final Day… Read More »

Scroll to Top