Sound Board

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

The Delhi High Court recently had the opportunity to decide a case on trademark infringement and passing off where they examined the concept of usage of a trademark in India. While we have blogged about the concept of usage earlier (read our posts here and here) what was interesting in this case was the evidence that was submitted by the Plaintiff and the factors that were relied on to prove spill over reputation and trans-border reputation.

Most people who want to get a trademark registered, search for the Super Mark. What is this Super mark? Super mark is the Invincible Superman of the Trademark world, i.e. it is a mark that would less likely to be objected to by the Registry.

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.

Not too long ago, advertisements on the radio, print media and television were the best means to spread the word about any goods or services that were to be marketed. Times have changed and it takes more than just a few ads and discounts to retain consumers and maintain a steady market share. Marketing, publicising and brand building have reached new heights in the last few years, thanks to the internet. Keeping pace with changing times and making a prominent place in the cyber space seems to…

So you’ve filed and registered your trademark, and have been using it consistently. Life goes on as merrily as possible until you realize that there are counterfeit products with your trademark in the market. The first thing you would have to do is conduct an investigation into where the products are coming from. The counterfeit products could be manufactured within India or it could be manufactured outside the country and shipped in.

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 transparency, the CGPDTM has now introduced "Stock and Flow based Dynamic Trademark Utility."

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).

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 the whole scenario.

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 those of you who decided to read the article based on the title, expecting some hard hitting piece of English prose on India and US talks on IP based on the issue of pharma patents and the like; I’m sorry to disappoint. I started off this post with a very simple question in mind as to whether the political parties contesting the elections in India have their names, symbols or slogans trademarked or not.