Sound Board

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

There have been several instances where I've looked at a menu card at a pub with a really cool cocktail name and wondered if they've trademarked it. Never did I once imagine that the ones that are common and used by all are in fact the ones that are registered trademarks. So would use of these trademarks by restaurants and pubs in their menu card amount to trademark infringement? There are several possibilities in connection with this and before I get to that, here’s a list of cocktail names…

The general notion, I’m sure is that copyright is a bundle of rights which is primarily an economic right (unless you are Gandhi, who resisted to enforce the copyright in his work for economic gain as economic rights) more than it being an indicator of the source of origin of the goods as in the case of trademarks. So what happens after you have assigned, either wholly or partially, the copyright in your work to someone else? Does that mean you have lost all your rights in the work that you…

There’s a rather common meme that was doing the rounds on social media which stated that “India is a country where we first become an “Engineer” and then think of what we really want to become” The number of people who identified with the statement was staggering and it’s not too hard to imagine. With medicine and engineering the top two things Indian parents want their kids to study (gotta be thankful to my folks who let me study law) it’s not hard to believe. The All India Council for…

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…

The Delhi High Court recently granted an injunction against India Circus on a suit filed by Good Earth for passing-off of their designs, particularly for motifs, logos, patterns of Serai, Periyar, Vrindavan, Lotus, Bali Mynah, Rose Princess and Falcon on products. The Court has discussed passing-off in case of designs and also the concept of novelty (which hasn’t been discussed much) in terms of a design being old in itself but when applied to a new article to which it has never been previously…

Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act, 1970 has been under the gun ever since it was introduced to the Act through an amendment in 2005. Foreign pharmaceutical companies have time and again failed to establish that the letter of this provision violates the TRIPS, and have, recently, in an aggressive move, tried to attack its validity by stating that the spirit of the section is not in compliance with the TRIPS. This move, which could hamper India’s pharmaceutical Industry, was effected by the…