Raja Selvam
Compulsory Licensing in India
We bring you another guest post by Ratnavel Pandian. In this post, Ratnavel discusses the Indian statutory provisions for compulsory licensing and instances of compulsory licensing in India. Introduction Before delving into an appraisal of the compulsory licensing regime in India, it is first…
Dynamic trademark utility - yet another step towards transparency!
We have been providing regular updates on the efforts taken by the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) to achieve complete automation and more significant, absolute transparency (some of our articles on this could be found here and here). In yet another move towards…
Google Glass - The United States and Indian Scenario
So what if the awe-inspiring Google GLASS had everyone spell bound; the spell and the GLASS appear to be unceremoniously shattered(pun intended!) by the United States Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO). The American Angle The USPTO had issued an intimation suspending all action with respect to the…
A Lowdown on the Indo-US Tensions due to India’s Patent Regime
We bring you a guest post by Ratnavel Pandian, a third year student of National University of Juridical Sciences. In this post, he takes us through why the US faces pressure from its lawmakers to take India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regarding India's patent regime and the unfairness of…
SICLD Registry awaits its first application
I write this post with Indian audience in mind. When reading about or discussing IP laws or rights, we tend to think only of patents, copyrights, trademarks and maybe designs. There are however other intellectual property (IP) laws in India. For instance, integrated circuit layouts are protected by…
Trademark Application Status “Advertised as Accepted (AAA)” - Explained
When a trademark application is filed, it is examined by the Trademark Office to check if it overcomes the objections laid down by the Trademarks Act 1999 (predominantly Section 9 and Section 11 of the Act). If there are objections to registration of the said mark, an opportunity is given to the…
No injuction based on ‘TODAY’ says the Delhi High Court
TODAY, I was absolutely resolute to write an article on the issue of TODAY. Well, of course, I do mean ‘India Today’ and its failed interim injunction against TV channel ‘Nation Today.’ QUICK FACTS For those of you who need a quick background on the issue, the reputed India Today group had…
Delhi High Court bowls out T20 ICC World Cup Copyright Infringement
When the cricket fever has caught on, in the Indian subcontinent with the ICC T20 World Cup matches providing some nail biting excitement, the Hon’ble Delhi Court has, at the perfect moment, granted an interim injunction restraining several entities mainly appearing to be pubs, cafes and…
No monopoly over generally used words
While deciding an appeal late last year, a division bench of the Madras High Court (“Madras HC”) held “[T]herefore, such a word, which is of general use, cannot be a monopoly of the appellants alone….” It is awfully difficult to create a list of words in general use in any language. However there…
Trademark Crystal : Taking on Goliath and winning
In the world of fashion, Swarovski is known for its crystals. Yet in what could be described as a David vs. Goliath battle, Swarovski lost its registered trademark “Crystal Glamour” in January 2014 because of a rectification petition filed by an innocuous and relatively unknown textile…