Indian IP Framework

Deceptive Similarity The Legal Test Under Indian Trademark Law

Leave a Comment / Trademark Article

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 as Trademark in India

Leave a Comment / Trademark Article

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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Colgate Palmolive Company & Anr. vs. Anchor Health and Beauty Care Pvt. Ltd.

Leave a Comment / Landmark Judgements on Trademarks

Delhi High Court | J.D. Kapoor J. | 29 October 2003 108 (2003) DLT 51 | 2003(27)PTC478(Del) Background Colgate Palmolive Company (Plaintiff No. 1), a US-incorporated multinational and its Indian subsidiary/licensee Colgate Palmolive (India) Ltd. (Plaintiff No. 2) had been manufacturing and selling tooth powder in India since 1951 in distinctively shaped cans bearing a

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

Leave a Comment / Trademark Article

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 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 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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Parallel Imports and Section 107A – The Bolar Exemption and Doctrine of Exhaustion in Indian Patent Law

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Among the most practically significant yet doctrinally complex provisions of the Patents Act, 1970 is Section 107A, inserted into the Act by the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002. In the two decades since its insertion, Section 107A has become one of the most contested and commercially consequential provisions in Indian pharmaceutical patent law, engaging questions that

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