Articles

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

Copyright Registration in India – Procedure and Evidentiary Value

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Among the most persistent misconceptions in Indian intellectual property practice is the belief that copyright must be registered to exist. Authors, artists, software developers, filmmakers, and businesses that create original works routinely ask whether they need to register their copyright before they can enforce it, and whether an unregistered work attracts the full protection of […]

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Trademark Prosecution and Opposition in India: From Application to Registration under the Trade Marks Act, 1999

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A trademark is, in commercial terms, the face of a business. It is the element that consumers reach for when they navigate a crowded market the word, symbol, logo, shape, or combination that tells them who made the goods or provided the service they are about to buy. The legal protection of that commercial identity

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Comparative Advertising and Trademarks in India

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Comparative advertising the practice by which a trader promotes their own goods or services by making explicit or implicit reference to the goods or services of an identifiable competitor occupies a uniquely contested position at the intersection of trademark law, consumer protection and commercial free speech. It is a practice that serves genuine consumer interests

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Patent Suit – Jurisdiction, Procedure and the Commercial Courts Act

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Intellectual property litigation in India has undergone a transformation of considerable significance over the past decade and nowhere is this transformation more visible than in the conduct of patent suits. The enactment of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, the establishment of specialised intellectual property divisions in the High Courts, the introduction of case management procedures

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Indian Copyright Law and the Berne Convention

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International intellectual property law rests on a web of multilateral treaties and conventions that establish minimum standards of protection, define reciprocal obligations among member states and create the framework within which domestic copyright systems operate. At the centre of this web, for copyright, is the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

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Domain Names as Trademarks – Cybersquatting and UDRP in India

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The emergence of the internet as the dominant medium of global commerce has generated a body of legal problems that the architects of modern intellectual property law could not have anticipated. Among the most significant and most commercially damaging of these problems is the phenomenon of cybersquatting the opportunistic registration of internet domain names that

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Remedies for Patent Infringement – Injunctions, Damages and Accounts of Profits

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The enforcement of a patent right is only as meaningful as the remedies available when that right is infringed. A patent that cannot be effectively enforced whose violation attracts only nominal consequences or whose vindication requires years of inconclusive litigation provides little real protection to the inventor and little genuine deterrence to would-be infringers. Conversely,

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Copyright in Photographs and Artistic Works in India

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Visual creativity occupies a distinctive place in the copyright landscape. A photograph taken in a fraction of a second, a painting developed over months, a sculpture carved from stone, an architectural elevation drafted with precision each of these represents an act of creative expression that the law recognises and protects, yet each raises questions about

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Trademark Dilution in India – Blurring and Tarnishment

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Trademark law, in its traditional formulation, is concerned primarily with consumer confusion the risk that the use of a similar mark will mislead consumers about the commercial origin of goods or services. The likelihood of confusion standard, which pervades the examination of relative grounds under Section 11, the infringement enquiry under Section 29 and the

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Defences to Patent Infringement – Section 107 and Beyond

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Patent infringement litigation in India, as in every major patent jurisdiction, is rarely a simple contest between an unimpeachable patent and an undeniable act of infringement. The defendant in a patent infringement suit has available to it a range of defences    statutory, equitable and procedural that can defeat or substantially limit the plaintiff’s claim even

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