Intellectual Property

In an advertisement war against consumer goods major Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), a competing company, USV Private Limited, has dragged the former’s well-known brands Lux, Pears, Dove and Rin in an “open pH challenge”. USV’s advertising strategy has shaken up India’s affordable soap market that was otherwise confidently relying on lucrative advertisements by movie stars without any reference to scientific data. ......

What are the various stages and the timelines involved in the grant of an Indian design application? An Indian design application goes through the following stages, till grant: Filing: First application in India: It is recommended to file the first application in India as soon as possible after a design is conceived. Convention design application......

Six months after it became a signatory to the Locarno Agreement (which establishes a classification for industrial designs), on 25 January 2021, India notified the Design (Amendment) Rules, 2021 to formally adopt the “Locarno Classification”. ......

In 2019, the multinational food and beverage major, PepsiCo sued a group of farmers in Gujarat, India, for ‘infringing’ a potato variety that it had registered under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 (the Act). Predictably, this suit caused an uproar, highlighting the ambiguity in the Indian law on farmers rights, and revived debates on whether farmers can be sued for infringing plant variety registrations. ......

Applying for a patent is a race against time to secure the earliest priority date (i.e., the date of the first filing of a patent application). As a result, patent applications are often filed with accompanying data that do not always capture all the facets of the invention. In such cases, using post-filing data to support the applications is often the only course available. ......

Can “any person” oppose a patent application before it is granted? Or must persons now provide their credentials before filing oppositions? Are there circumstances when such oppositions cannot be entertained? The Bombay High Court was faced with questions like these in the recent case of Dhaval Diyora vs. Union of India (WP(L) 3718/2020; 05 November 2020). ......

Injunctions are the first resort for parties seeking to stop websites from infringing trademarks or hosting copyright-infringing data. But injunctions do not always work the way they’re expected to in these cases. Often, the infringing content is merely moved to a different server or is re-uploaded or re-hosted on a different platform. In order to circumvent the technicalities of the internet and in order to strengthen the armoury of trademark and copyright holders to counter digital piracy, a new type of injunction has come into vogue to better enforce digital rights – dynamic injunctions. ......

In patent law, there is a constant tug of war between the importance of incentivizing innovators and the need to ensure that consumers have access to innovations. The law reflects this tussle as well. But this constant striving to balance the rights between patentees and consumers is essential for the patent system to function and be meaningful to society. ......

The phrase “at least one of” is commonly used in patent claims, but its interpretation is subjective and has led to some controversy. The issue that arises is this: when the phrase in its entirety is “at least one of A, B and C”, should it be understood as at least one of A AND at least one of B AND at least one of C, or should it be understood as at least one of A OR B OR C. ......