SpicyIP Weekly Review(June 3rd Week)

The week started off with Sai Vinod bringing us up to speed with trademark infringement threats against movie producers lately. Recently, two movies- ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ and ‘Ankur Arora Murder case’ were on the receiving end for trademark infringement on account of allegedly objectionable references to Rooh Afza(a fruit squash) and a certain biscuit brand respectively. In the former case, Justice Manmohan Singh passed an order restraining the home video release of the movie Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (the order clarifies that the injunction will not affect theatre exhibition of movie). In the latter, the production house of ‘Ankur Arora Murder Case’ agreed to blur the wrapper of the biscuit packet to avoid unnecessary trouble. Sai further analysed the references in the movies and concluded that the references in both these movies were inconsequential and at best coincidental to the narrative.

I blogged about reports indicating the Thai Government’s plans to issue a compulsory licence for an anti-retroviral drug Efaverenz. The drug is manufactured by Merck. Plans for issuance of licence were announced way back in 2006, which did not materialise. In 2007 it was reported that Merck had substantially reduced prices for AIDS afflicted poor nations. However, this particular development about revival of plans to license Efaverenz, as reported by IP Komodo is subject to verification from a secondary source. 

Rajiv wrote about a recent notification issued by the DIPP, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which proposes to raise the fee levied for filing and prosecuting patents before the Indian patent office. The notification may be accessed directly here. The proposed rules provide an incentive to filers for electronic filing and levy additional fees of 10% on any filing done on paper. Further, the fees for most tasks are low for individuals, and higher when filed for by- other than natural persons. He opines that the fee raise is a welcome change and a part of the overhaul of the Indian IP system.

Prashant blogged about the grossly unfair terms on which Google has been contracting with Indian users regarding use of its Ad-Sense program. The program places relevant advertisements during the search results on the Google search engine and also on third-party websites. The procedure for termination of the program is rather opaque without appropriate disclosure of the reasons for the same. Furthermore, Google’s contracts for Indian user of the Ad-Sense program are riddled with biased and unfair clauses. The clauses specify that in the event of a dispute an Indian user shall submit to the laws of California for arbitration, thus putting the Indian consumer at a huge disadvantage. 

SpicyIP Events

Event: IPEX -2013

Conference & Exposition

26-27 July 2013: Taj Krishna: Hyderabad: India

Andhra Pradesh Technology Development and Promotion Centre (APTDC) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) are organizing their flagship event IPEX-2013 -An International Conference and Exposition on “Building and Managing an IP Ecosystem for Business Excellence”. The conference will provide a forum for senior government officials, Industry leaders ,academicians and business executives from India and abroad to discuss current trends on IP Management and issues, exchange best practices, develop solutions and publicize new initiatives on building an IP Ecosystem in an Organization.

For the brochure, see here. For the registration form, click here. 

SpicyIP readers should note that mentioning SpicyIP at the time of registration will give them a 30% discount on registration fees (for non-members).

Event: DSIR-FMC Workshop on Facilitating Technology Acquisition

Venue: National Institute for Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises, Yusufguda, Hyderabad

Date: 28th June, 2013

The Andhra Pradesh Technology Development & Promotion Centre (APTDC) has partnered with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research(DSIR) and Foundation for MSME Clusters (FMC) to conduct a one day workshop on Facilitating Technology Acquisition in Hyderabad on 28th June, 2013. The Workshop is set to be conducted in light of the new Patent Acquisition and Collaborative Research and Technology Development Scheme (PACE), launched by the Government of India. 

A questionnaire has been released for Patent Providers as well as Patent Seekers by the DSIR. The deadline for submission of the filled questionnaires are 15th June, 2013. The workshop will also feature officials from DSIR who will speak about PACE, its working and its benefits.

The brochure for the workshop is available here.

International developments

1. National Security Agency( NSA) continued to be in the news regarding its outrageous surveillance program PRISM.


2. The US Supreme Court delivered its judgment in the Myriad case (Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics). In an unanimous ruling, the nine Justices came to the conclusion that DNA sequences are products of nature; isolating them from their natural environment does not create anything with markedly different characteristics. Isolated human genes are therefore not considered patentable. However, cDNA is deemed patent eligible, because its chemical composition is different from that of naturally occurring DNA.
IPKat has already carried a few posts( here and here). Readers can expect a detailed analysis of the decision on SpicyIP soon!