Sound Board

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

As a software developer, there are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration at the time of negotiation with the person engaging you to develop the software. It is very crucial to read the agreements that you might sign. On the other hand, as a person engaging a third party to develop software, you would always want exclusivity to the said software and accordingly, would like to include terms in a contract favouring that. So what happens when there a battle of ownership between…

I realised how there are so many myths that exist in the minds of people around us when I recently got into an argument with one of the people at my gym about music and licensing. So to give a little bit of a background, the lawyer in me urges me to go ask the shop owner/restaurant owner or any owner for that matter who play music in their premises, whether they have the license to do so. So I asked the manager at my gym whether or not they had obtained a license to play the music that they do.…

Intellectual property laws provide protection for some works under both copyright and design law. At the face of it, the law on this point seems rather clear. However, interpretation of Section 15 of the Copyright Act in conjunction with the definition of “Design” under the Design Act makes it slightly tricky. A recent case decided by the Delhi High Court has tried to differentiate between a copyright and a design on the basis of the nature of the work and its industrial application. The Judge…

Have you wanted to visit the Maclaren’s Pub or Central Perk and live your moment from How I Met Your Mother or Friends? Have you wanted to taste the Bertie Bott’s Every Bean Flavour from the Harry Potter Series or wished the Bat Mobile was real?! I’m sure we all have wanted to live or rather re-live some form of fantasy and in fact some of it has been made possible! However, as someone working in the field of intellectual property, I’m forced to think of the fictional products in the real world…

Celebrities in India (particularly actors and film makers) have become extremely vigilant of their rights. There has been a considerable increase in the number of cases requesting for John Doe orders, recognition of celebrity rights and the number of trademark applications for the name of famous personalities have arisen. The Courts in many cases have recognized the concept of personality rights and have even decided cases when there has been unauthorized use of a personality’s name. However, a…

Ever wanted to know the recipe for your favourite dish in a restaurant? Or wished that you could make Pringles at home? They wouldn’t be special or in demand anymore if you could do make it by yourself! This got me thinking on the best ways to protect food recipes and prompted me to write this article.

If you are a wrestling fan, you would have definitely heard of John Cena, Randy Orton, The Rock, Cm Punk, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, The Great Khali, Rey Mysterio, HHH, Edge etc. As a fan of these mega stars, you would have purchased many merchandise to be more like them and also would have made sure that you bought the original ones and not the replicas. But are you certain that what you are buying is in fact the original piece? More often than not, retailers import few pieces of original…

YouTube is filled with videos of people (budding artists!) singing songs of their favourite artists in their own style and giving it their personal touch or artists who are remixing songs. In the first scenario, it would be a most likely be cover version of the original song since the singer is retaining the lyrics and the musical arrangement but singing it in his own style. However, in the case of remixes, the artist is changing the musical arrangement by adding beats, lyrics and a few notes,…

There have been too many copyright issues in the recent times, either between the producer or the director of the film with regard to ownership of copyright or between say, a scriptwriter and the director. This got me thinking about the rights of the different people who contribute toward making a movie, well a complete movie. There is the music composer, the lyricist, the sound recorder, the record label company to name a few who are individuals who come up with creative ideas and turn them…