Trademarks Act does not contemplate permission of civil court to override other provisions for filing of rectification application

25^th December

The Supreme Court examined the various sections under the Trade & Merchandise Marks Act 1958 and Trademarks Act, 1999 to determine whether a person could resort to rectification proceedings before the statutory authorities (Registrar/IPAB) even in a situation where infringement proceedings had been instituted and the plea of validity ...

Copyright of producer in cinematograph film includes dubbing rights

24th December

The author of the script for a cinematograph film sought permanent injunction against the producer of the movie in Tamil language, from dubbing the film in Telugu language. The appellant-author claimed that he held the copyright in the script and had only permitted the producer to make the film in one language.
 
The producer of t...

No claim of exclusivity lies by use of mark similar to registered trademark as descriptive word

29th November

The plaintiff was registered proprietor of marks ‘Swadi’ and ‘Swadisht’ in respect of rice. It used the word ‘Swaad’ as part of its tagline. All three words denote taste and were challenged as being descriptive, generic and ineligible for any claim of exclusivity.

The plaintiff argued that the mark ...

Shape marks serving as indication of origin

1st December

At issue was the invalidation of trademark, namely the shape of London taxi and its revocation for non-use. According to the appellants, the shape of the taxi which was recognised as licensed London taxi was distinctive and served as an indication of the origin of goods. Over the years the appellant had made minor changes to the shape but continued t...

Mere addition of suffix or prefix to a mark does not remove likelihood of confusion

27th November

The appellant was aggrieved by the order of permanent injunction passed in favour of respondent who runs fast food restaurant and was using the name ‘Adiga’, ‘Vasudev Adiga’ and various other combinations with ‘Adiga’.
 
The respondent was prior user of the unregistered trademark (since 1993) an...

Trademark infringement when products involved are different

In a case pertaining to a suit for trademark infringement and passing off, in the mark “Vogue”,  the trial court had vacated the ex-parte interim injunction in favour of the plaintiffs(Advance Magazine Publishers Inc). The appeal against that was dismissed by the Delhi High Court.  The plaintiff was the owner of the mark “VOGUE” used i...

Copyrights - Sound recording rights different from literary or musical rights

A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court has dismissed the appeal filed against the Single Judge  Order granting an interim injunction, restraining the defendants (Trimurti Films Pvt. Ltd)  from releasing the film “Baadshaho” with the song “Keh Doon Tumhe”. Plaintiff(Cassettes Industries Pvt. Ltd) had filed a suit for copyright infrin...

Are Belated Claim Amendments of Granted Patents Permitted?

Summary
In a recent order dated August 01, 2017, the Singapore Court of Appeal [See end note i], upheld the High Court’s order [See end note ii] rejecting Warner-Lambert Company LLC’s (Warner-Lambert) application in a pending patent infringement suit against Novartis (Singapore) Pte Ltd (Novartis), seeking leave to amend its Patent for the drug &...

Trademarks – Phonetic similarity when word used as suffix in one mark and as prefix in another

4th September

Bombay High Court on 2-8-2017, in the case of Pidilite Industries Limited v. Poma-Ex Products, observed that there existed high degree of phonetic similarity between the mark of the plaintiff “FEVIKWIK” and the mark of the defendant “KWIKHEAL”. The Court issued an interim injunction in favour of the Plaintif...

Global injunction on display of search engine results

4th September

Google has on 24^th of July brought an action before the US District Court (Northern District of California-San Jose Division) to prevent enforcement of the Canadian Supreme Court Order that prohibits Google from publishing within the US, search result information about the contents of the internet.

The Canadian Supreme Cour...

Copyright in literary work authored by director of company

4th September

The Delhi High Court on 4-8-2017, in the case of Neetu Singh v. Rajiv Saumitra granted an interim injunction in favour of the plaintiff. The suit was pertaining to copyright infringement in a literary work.

The defendant contended that the literary work was produced by the plaintiff during the course of her employmen...

Right to Privacy – Supreme Court’s landmark judgement

The Basics

How the reference came about?

- It was a reference from the Aadhar case.
- There was an apparent conflict between the judgments of the Supreme Court in MP Sharma case (8-judge bench) & Kharak Singh case (6 judge bench) on the one hand, versus more than 6-7 d...