Sound Board

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

Last Friday, the Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2014 (the “Rules”) came into effect. The public notice issued by the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks summarises that the Rules basically deal with a revised official fee structure and the inclusion of a new category of applicants called the “small entity”.

Following my earlier post, I am incredibly excited about the recent launch of yet some more forms being made available online. With this launch, the Trademarks Office has made a total of 57 forms available online.

To all who read this, my aim here is to share something that I have been brooding about...It may even be something “you” have been brooding about.. Hopefully someone or maybe even the Indian Trademark Office will come up with a satisfying answer?

Dumb Starbucks impressed and gathered quite a lot of customers for free coffee on the day of their opening in Los Angeles last week. They ran out of coffee eventually but the publicity continued! Oh, they aren't associated with the REAL Starbucks and even admit that they consider them as models. Naturally, Starbucks wasn't too happy with their trademark being infringed.

For those of you who use (and love, maybe?) the e-filing system (“system”) of the Trademarks Office, things just got lovelier. Until the evening of February 05, 2014, the Trademark Office’s system allowed trademark applications (under various forms) along with a couple of requests such as responding to the examination report issued by the Trademarks Office, filing a request for inclusion of excess characters in the specification of goods or services to be filed online.

We bring to you a guest post by Keshava H. B., a fifth year law student from University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun who wants to specialize in intellectual property laws. In this article, he talks about sound marks and smell marks.

We bring to you a guest post by Nemish Zaveri, a fourth year law student from Institute of Law, Nirma University with a keen interest in intellectual property laws. In this article, he presents his views on the requirement to serve the O-3 notice. An O-3 notice is a reminder sent to the registered proprietor of a trademark before the validity of his trademark expires.

Yoga is one of the oldest physical and spiritual exercises known to mankind. It is collective knowledge and has been believed to be in existence from around 2500 B.C. Come to think of it, there should be no intellectual property battle over it – it is India’s traditional knowledge and no single entity or company should be allowed to monopolise any yoga asana or posture in the form of a patent or copyright, as the case may be. However, practically and legally, it isn’t this straight forward and…