Intellectual Property Law

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

Leave a Comment / Patent Article

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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Working of Patents in India – Section 83, Form 27 and Consequences

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Few obligations in Indian patent law are as frequently misunderstood, as consistently neglected and as consequential in their implications as the requirement to work a patent in India. The Patents Act, 1970 does not treat the grant of a patent as the end of the patentee’s obligations to the public it treats it as the

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Mattel Inc. & Ors. v. Mr. Jayant Agarwalla & Ors.

Leave a Comment / Landmark Judgements on Copyrights

High Court of Delhi | Justice S. Ravindra Bhat | Date of Decision: 17.09.2008 Case Number: IA No. 2352/2008 in CS (OS) 344/2008 BACKGROUND The plaintiffs comprise a Delaware-incorporated company and its subsidiaries incorporated in the United Kingdom and India, engaged in the manufacture and marketing of toys, games and consumer products. Among their well-known

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