This presentation was delivered by Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala to PGP-Enterprise Management students at IIM-Bangalore, as a part of their Business Law curriculum. The presentation entitles Intellectual property and Licensing covered the following topics-
Idea- What is an idea, example, whether all ideas can be protected.
Patent- What is a patent, term of a patent.
Protection Strategy
Spectrum
Licensing
Copyright- What is copyright, idea/ expression dichotomy, term of copyright.
Protection with respect to copyright…
This post discusses a recent case update with regard to prior use of a descriptive trademark. The case presents an interesting aspect of trademark law, i.e., when claiming for passing off action of a descriptive trademark, the Plaintiff must provide convincing evidence to establish the prior use and the secondary meaning which has been acquired for the trademark. The case described herein was filed on 26th July 2010 before the High Court of Bombay, by two companies namely, Pidilite Industries Limited…
In October this year, the Bombay High Court passed its decision in the case between The Indian Express Limited and Chandran Prakash Shivhare, the publisher and distributor of a journal called "Indian Express" filed before the Bombay High Court in the year 2010, to seek an injunction against the Defendant, and to restrain them from using the title ‘Indian Express’. The crux of this case was whether a registered trademark could be infringed by the use of the identical mark which had…
On 19th November, 2015 Draft Trademark (Amendment) Rules, 2015 were issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI). The Rules are intended to amend the current Trademark Rules, 2002 and have proposed a complete revamping of the same. The rules propose the trademark filing fee to be doubled, which means a hundred percent hike in official charges.
The Digital India initiative has gone a step further, by discouraging physical filing of Trade Mark applications. The applicants will be required…
Google is the world’s most famous search engine. Google's mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The major portion of Google's profit is through its highly successful program AdWords, which provides advertisers advertising space for related searches. AdWords is a program that helps companies to advertise and promote their products or services on Google’s websites. The program works by providing highly relevant ads and suggestions to third party users when they enter keywords…
This post will discuss another trademark infringement case in the ecommerce market in India.
Recently, in October this year, Eicher Motors Ltd, which manufactures and sells the Royal Enfield bike, filed an infringement suit against Saurabh Katar and Kuldeep Singh, for infringing their trademark ENFIELD, ROYAL ENFIELD and BULLET. The suit filed before the Delhi High Court, also claimed infringement of copyright of the logos and the website of Eicher Motors Ltd. Eicher alleged that Saurabh Katar and Kuldeep Singh were…
One can always see a lot of advertisements, while performing a google search or just about any search on other search engines. Advertisements, and more recently, keyword advertising are a major source of revenue generation for search engines. The case that we are about to discuss, is something that nobody ever anticipated to happen.
Multi Time Machine Inc, (MTM) manufactures watches, specifically special ops watches and high-end tactical watches. It sells them on its own website and through its various…
This post briefs three copyright cases that provide insights into copyright issues with respect to content posted on Social Media platforms.
Scrabble v. Scrabulous
In 2008, two Indians Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, launched a Facebook App called 'Scrabulous.' It was a word game similar to Scrabble. Initially Mattel, and later Hasbrow, right holders of the Scrabble game sued the Agarwalla brothers for both copyright and trade mark infringement at the Delhi High Court.
After reviewing the facts, the Delhi High…
In furtherance of the previous post about the BMW Emblem case , the current post is regarding the luxury automobile manufacturer, Bentley Motors Inc, which prevailed in a trademark infringement lawsuit against the makers and installers of kits that transform more modest vehicles into virtual clones of the Bentley.
The crux of the issue here is, whether producing and installing external body kits to inexpensive vehicles to seem similar to high-end luxury automobiles constitutes trademark infringement and dilution of the…
This post discusses the scope of protection of black and white trade mark registrations in infringement proceedings.
The OHIM (Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market) made the announcement, on 15 April, 2014, about a new common practice for trademarks registered in black and white. The OHIM and the participating national offices have now issued a Common Communication, together with details of the implementation process.
As per the new Common Practice, a black & white (or grayscale) mark will only be considered…