Sound Board

Our thoughts and views on the practice of Intellectual Property in India and around the world.

The Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks (CGPDTM) has taken recent initiatives to clear backlogs in trademark prosecution and opposition matters, and a public notice was issued on February 6, 2023 encapsulating a gargantuan list of trademark application numbers that are said to pertain those applications that could be “deemed to be abandoned” as per the provisions of law. The said list was published along with Trademark Journal No: 2090, and the Office has been simultaneously…

In a trademark infringement suit filed by Hermes International, one of the prayers by HERMES is that the mark of Hermes is declared as a well-known trademark within the meaning of Section 2(1)(zg) of The Trade Marks Act, 1999.

In a welcome move, the Indian Trademark Office (TMO) issued a public notice via Trade Marks Journal No. 2090 dated February 6, 2022, whereby the general public & IP practitioners were informed that 1. Applications for which a response to the examination report has not been filed within the prescribed time & 2. Applications that have received oppositions and for which the TMO has properly served the notice of opposition to the applicant but where no counter-statement has been filed with the TMO

Indian business owners are constantly worried about the Ease of doing business, but yet they were not aware of one ranking where the country was in the top 10 places once. It is the Ease of doing Piracy. Twenty years back computer and computing services were very rare thing that was used only for exceptional activities, but now it has become a necessity for everything. When computers started to become the norm for every business in the first decade of the 21st century, businesses had to incur a…

Microsoft discovered that the defendants were illegally using its software products, including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and Windows Server. Upon investigation, it was found that the defendants had 130 computer systems, most of which had Microsoft's software installed on them, but the licenses held by the defendants did not match their usage. This indicated that the defendants were engaging in the unlicensed use of Microsoft's software products. Despite repeated requests from…

In a welcome move the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks by public notice dated December 16, 2022 eliminated the mandatory requirement of filing physical copies of the forms for filing a design application in India. As a result, applicants are encouraged to use the online portal to file forms and documents related to design registration. These documents should be filed online and must be digitally signed in accordance with the Information Technology Act, 2000.

As patent lawyers, meeting deadlines can be crucial to the success of a patent application. Two of the most important deadlines one needs to be aware of while prosecuting patent applications in India are the deadline for filing a request for examination and the deadline for filing a response to the first examination report.

The Delhi High Court’s ruling in the case of Adobe Inc. v. Namase Patel and Ors. serves as a reminder of the importance of protecting trademarks and intellectual property rights on the internet. In this case, the court granted a permanent injunction in favour of the Plaintiff. The Court recognised Namase Patel as a habitual cyber squatter and awarded a sum of INR 2,00,01,000/- (approx. US$ 242,000) in damages against the defendant to act as a deterrent against such actions in the future. 

The Bombay High Court ruled in favour of the plaintiff, Pidilite Industries Ltd., who had filed a trademark infringement suit against the defendant for using the mark R-SEAL, which was allegedly similar to the plaintiff's registered mark M-SEAL. The Court found that the defendant had obtained the trademark by fraudulently concealing the existence of the plaintiff's prior registered marks from the Registrar of Trade Marks.

In an interesting turn of events, the Delhi High Court ruled in favour of Sujata Chaudhri of Sujata Chaudhri IP Attorneys in a trademark infringement, copyright infringement, and passing off suit restricting another intellectual property lawyer Swarupa Ghosh from using a deceptively similar logo.