The OpenAI case and what’s at stake for AI and copyright in India
The first legal challenge to generative artificial intelligence models in India surfaced last week when news agency ANI filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in the Delhi High Court alleging copyright infringement.
In this case, a first-of-its-kind in India, New Delhi-based ANI has accused the San Francisco-headquartered...
Delhi High Court on the use of trademarks as keywords in Google Ads Program
Significant changes to benefit patent applicants and owners
The Delhi High Court ruled on two appeals involving Google’s use of trademarks as keywords in its Ads Program, finding that using trademarks as keywords does not inherently constitute trademark infringement, thus upholding Google’s practice in both...
Delhi High Court Restricts Sale of Refurbished Goods for ‘Reverse Passing-Off
Reverse passing off is not something that courts encounter every day. It occurs when a defendant purchases a plaintiff’s product, repackages, and sells it under the defendant’s mark or name, resulting in the public coming to associate the qualities of the plaintiff’s product with that of the defendant.
When this adversely...
Blend In or Stand Out? Branding Blunders of Indian Startups
Being low in descriptiveness makes a trademark high in exclusivity.
There is something about the recently concluded first season of Sony Liv’s reality TV show Shark Tank India that would bother intellectual property (IP) lawyers. While pitching their business ideas to the sharks (potential investors forming the panel of...
National handloom week: A time to fix the GI magic wand
The GI Act enacted in 2003 was believed to revive the dying handloom industry in India. However, 19 years later, the benefits failed to trickle down to the rural workers. What can we do to make the magic wand work?
India is celebrating the handloom week from April 7 to 14, 2022. While the handloom industry in India is...
The Trademark and GI Battle for Kashmiri Products Must be Taken Seriously
India, being a pioneer in geographical indication protection in the region, must take the lead and be the first one in acceding to the Geneva Act, which offers protection to handicraft GIs as well.
Last month, the World Trademark Review carried a report that the Romanian IP Office (OSIM), after an initial refusal,...
A Response to the Alternate Interpretation on Permissibility of Sub-licensing under Indian Trademark Law
Last week, Kapil had written a guest post giving an alternate interpretation to the arguments in my post on the impermissibility of sub-licensing arrangements under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (‘the TM Act’).
The main counter points by Kapil against my argument that the TM Act does not permit...
Is Sub-Licensing of a Trademark Permitted under the Indian Trade Marks Act?
Last month, I had blogged about the feasibility of a sub-license under the Indian copyright law.
In this blog post, I will examine the issue whether the Indian Trade Marks Act, 1999 (“the TM Act”) permits sub-licensing of trademarks. An oft-discussed issue while working on corporate deals which involve IP...
COVID-19: How Best Can the Indian IP Office Help its Stakeholders?
In these unprecedented times where a pandemic has brought the globe to a standstill, the top-most concern of IP owners (of course, other than to save themselves from COVID-19) would be about meeting deadlines in IP prosecution.
This is because, deadlines in IP prosecution are often hard deadlines, and if...