Sound Board

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

My science teacher in school (I’m certain most them around the world) always told us how science is connected to everything in our day to day lives. It was quite amusing to understand how it worked practically and I wondered if it was in fact possible to connect something else like we connect science to our daily lives. I have come to realise that I feel the same way about intellectual property and constantly connect it to the things we come across in the course of our daily life – Mobile…

When I first came across the medicines SIZOPIN and SYZOPIN, I honestly thought it might have just been a typographical error and that they originate from the same source. Much to my astonishment, they are in fact two different drugs used for treating almost the similar thing. So naturally there had to be a suit for infringement by the one against the other.

Growing up, board games were an integral part of my childhood and I particularly liked to play with my granddad because he’d always let me win! It is always fun to play a game of monopoly or scrabble with family or a group of friends, the losing and winning fights apart! Recently at work we were discussing games (among the many things discuss) and what we enjoy(ed) playing. It was while discussing this that I started thinking about intellectual property protection for board games.

I’m sure most of us have or at least try to have a signature so unique that you wish is associated solely with you whether you are a celebrity or not. Some of us are also very particular about our signatures and we feel that it defines our personality. I’m sure we’ve all come across articles titled “so what does your signature mean if you draw a horizontal line underneath with two dots below that” and like things. Leaving the personality you are aside, have you come across a signature so…

I have a startup story and it’s not a pleasant one. So if you’re expecting to read tales of college grads hunched over laptops in a basement, who created something unique, got funded and are billionaires by the time they are twenty eight, stop reading right away.

The David-Goliath tussle in the trademark world is an unending one. It is a scenario where a big company is suing a small company and most often, the big company is made out to be a trademark bully. Though that might be true, in my opinion, it has more to do with protecting one’s trademark rights keeping in mind the business interests and the losses that the company is likely to incur as a result of such use by a third party. So if the actions of the smaller company are likely to affect the…

India became a member of the Madrid Protocol on July 8, 2013 and since then has received about 13768 applications designating India and has filed 155 applications under the Madrid Protocol. While there have been several debates on the best route to take in terms of protecting international brands in India, and both have good arguments, there is one issue that I would like to deal with today – the claim of use of your trademark in India.

Well, if you have a unique surname then you’ll not only have difficulties in explaining to people how to get it right but you will also have the difficulty in getting it registered as a trademark in India. Having said that, there are obviously many discrepancies between the law and the judgments and what is actually happening.

Every single time I’m sitting at the comfort of my home, e-commerce window shopping and buying things at the click of a button, I feel so thankful. Though this is not how I ideally enjoy shopping, it definitely makes life easy on some days! The e-commerce business in India has picked up a great deal over the last few years and today there are dozens of e-commerce websites catering to consumers for their varied needs. The companies that started off earlier occupy a large market share (more…

There’s an instinct within most us that prompts us to lie or state the most ludicrous things when accused of being in the wrong. This primordial feeling (which may be what helped us survive) of justifying and rationalizing one’s actions is most evident in negotiations with trademark infringers and domain squatters (someone who registers a domain name with the intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else). While there are judicial fora to retrieve domains like the…