Articles

In-depth analytical articles on Indian IP law including prosecution,enforcement, statutory interpretation and case developments

Copyright Issues in Social Media

Copyright Issues in Social Media and User-Generated Content

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Social media has fundamentally transformed the relationship between copyright law and everyday human behaviour. Before the internet, the act of reproducing, distributing or communicating a copyrighted work to the public was largely confined to publishers, broadcasters and commercial enterprises with the infrastructure to do so at scale. Copyright infringement was, for the most part, a […]

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copyright duration - rules for different categories

Copyright Duration – Rules for Different Categories of Works under Indian Law

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Every grant of exclusive rights must, in a society that values both the reward of creative effort and the freedom of public access to culture and knowledge, have a defined limit. Copyright is no exception. The rights that the Copyright Act, 1957 confers upon authors, producers, performers and broadcasters are not permanent. They subsist for

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Copyright in Databases

Copyright in Databases and Compilations under Indian Law

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The question of whether a collection of information facts, data, references, records or  other pre-existing material assembled into an organised whole deserves intellectual property protection is among the most contested and practically consequential in copyright law. At its core, it forces a direct confrontation with the foundational tension between two equally legitimate values: the interest

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Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence – Who Owns AI-Generated Works?

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Few questions in contemporary intellectual property law have generated as much urgency, as much disagreement and as much genuine legal uncertainty as the question of who if anyone owns the copyright in a work generated by artificial intelligence. The question is not merely academic. Generative AI systems now produce novels, compose music, paint images, write

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Deceptive Similarity The Legal Test

Deceptive Similarity The Legal Test Under Indian Trademark Law

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No concept in Indian trademark law is more frequently litigated, more extensively analyzed in judicial decisions or more consequential in its practical application than deceptive similarity. It is the standard by which the Trade Marks Registry determines whether a pending application conflicts with an earlier registration, the criterion by which courts assess whether an allegedly

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Trade Dress and Product Shape

Trade Dress and Product Shape as Trademark in India

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Among the most commercially significant and doctrinally complex questions in contemporary Indian trademark law is the extent to which the visual and physical appearance of a product or its packaging its trade dress can be protected as a trademark. In a marketplace saturated with competing products, the overall commercial appearance of goods has become one

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colour marks sound marks and non traditional trademark patenevo.in

Colour Marks, Sound Marks and Non-Traditional Trademarks in India

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The history of trademark law is, in significant part, a history of expanding frontiers. What began as a system designed to protect word marks and simple devices the merchant’s mark stamped on goods to identify their origin has evolved over centuries into a framework broad enough, in principle, to accommodate almost any sign capable of

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Descriptive Marks and the Acquired Distinctiveness

Descriptive Marks and the Acquired Distinctiveness Doctrine in Indian Trademark Law

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Of all the categories of marks that traverse the trademark registration process in India, descriptive marks present the most nuanced and intellectually demanding set of questions. They occupy the contested middle ground of the distinctiveness spectrum neither inherently protectable like fanciful or arbitrary marks, nor wholly beyond protection like generic terms and their treatment reveals,

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Government Use of Patents - Section 99 to 103

Government Use of Patents – Section 99 to 103 of the Patents Act, 1970

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The relationship between sovereign power and private intellectual property rights has been one of the most contested and consequential questions in the design of patent systems since the earliest days of modern patent law. A patent grants its holder a monopoly a right to exclude all others, including the state, from using the patented invention

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