Sound Board

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

There has been a lot of brouhaha over the recent judgment of the Delhi High Court, where the Court has ordered ISPs to block websites that were illegally broadcasting the FIFA World Cup in a suit filed by Multi Screen Media (MSM) Satellite claiming exclusive broadcasting rights. The initial judgment contained 472 websites, however, an order passed on July 1st named 219 websites in furtherance of an application made one of the Defendants.

The trademark registration process, which we have covered in an earlier post is fairly straightforward. A trademark application is filed, examined by the Trademark office, either refused or allowed subject to a hearing, advertised and registered if it is not opposed. In this post I’ve decided to cover the examination process and in particular responding to an examination report.

The Petitioner Sri Darshan Kumar started a partnership firm along with Sri Ranjit Kumar Sharma (Respondent) and Sri Raj Kumar in the year 2004. In due course of the business the firm started using the mark BAWA/BAWA FEED for goods such as cattle feed, poultry feed and other allied goods. On 22nd September the respondent filed for a trademark registration for BAWA/BAWA FEED under classes 31 and 35, claiming usage of the mark from 1st April 2001. Both the applications had the address of the firm…

Many a time, the online status of a mark shows ‘ exam report issued ,’ perceiving which, one might assume that it implies ‘issuance of examination report’ post examination of the mark. But in reality, the said status is being used by the Trademark Office to denote that the mark has been ordered to be advertised and is yet to be advertised.

The term “ objected ’ implies that the particular trademark application has been examined and a report generated as well, laying down the objections against the registrability of the mark.

In its notification on July 2, 2014, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) forewarns patent applicants the consequences of not depositing a sample of the biological material with an International Depository Authority (IDA).

In my earlier posts (here and here), I discussed the position of law on injunctions, the requirements for grant of temporary injunction and relevant cases with respect to trademarks in India. So let’s assume that we managed to restrain the defendants from using our trademark, what next? We want the defendants to pay (literally) for what they did and compensate our losses, to the maximum possible extent. This sum of money claimed as compensation for loss or injury is what we refer to as damages.…

You’ve probably come across that Shakespearean quote several times in your life. Shakespeare is one of those people that everyone knows of because you just ought to (to seem knowledgeable during small talk at the very least). What you may not know in the context of Copyright is that none of his works were protected under the law of Copyright (probably why my school staged his plays for several years without worrying about rights). The Statute of Anne which was the Act which brought in copyright…

The year 2014 has witnessed a lot of goods entering the family of Geographical Indicators ( GI ). Goods such as Madurai Malli (jasmine), Pattamadai Pai (Pattamadai mat), Nachiarkoil Kuthuvilakku (Nachiarkoil lamp), Toda Embroidery, Thanjavur Veena and Chettinad Kottan (palmyra basketry) have all become a part of the GI family thus bringing Tamil Nadu with the second highest number of registered GIs in the country; A total of 24.

In a spate of orders recently (see here, here and here), the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) has asked the Indian Patent Office (IPO) to consider those matters afresh because the IPO’s orders lacked reasoning.