2013’s Leading IP Developments Report – An Update

A big thanks to our readers who’ve sent in suggestions for our upcoming SpicyIP report on 2013’s leading IP developments – namely, Shashank Mangal, Nehaa Chaudhari and two anonymous comments sent in.

For readers who may have missed our earlier post, I’m referring to our request for input regarding our list of 2013’s biggest IP developments that we plan to write a report on. We’ve loosely defined ‘biggest’ as those with most jurisprudential value or those that have made a substantial impact on the Indian IP eco-system. We put together a list of 15 developments for our preliminary list (reproduced in 2nd list below) and had asked our readers to send in cases / developments which they thought we should add on to our list. Suggestions of developments/cases that we should add include:

1. Marrakesh Treaty
2. 2013 Copyright rules
3. CC India and CC 4.0
4. ICAR adopted its open access policy.
5. DeitY released its Framework on OSS adoption in E Governance systems.
6. Fresenius Kabi Oncology Limited, Vs. Glaxo Group Limited; Date of the order: July 27, 2013; IPAB – Importance of evidence;
7. F. Hoffmann-LA Roche Ltd. & Anr v Cipla Ltd & Anr.; Date of the order: May 1, 2013 By Hon’ble Delhi High Court; – revocation proceeding initiated by a third party
8. NTT DoCoMo Inc v The Controller of Patents and Designs; Date of the order- October 28, 2013; The Intellectual Property Appellate Board; OA/39/2011/PT/CH – proof of right
9. India’s accession to Madrid Protocal
10. Registration of ISRA (Indian Singers’ Right Assoiation) as a Copyright Society.

Our initial list consisted of the following:

Cases:

1. Novartis AG v. Union of India & Others – Section 3(d)
2. Bayer v. Natco – Compulsory License
3. Bristol Myers Squibb v. Bhutada – Quia Timet Actions
4.1 Aachi Masala v. S.D. Murali & Registrar of Trademarks & 4.2 Shreedhar Milk Foods v. Vikas Tyagi & Registrar of Trademarks – IPAB’s power of review
5. Akuate v. Star – Hot News Doctrine
6. Satnam Overseas v. Sant Ram – Kohinoor Trademark
7. BDR v. BMS – Dasatinib CL rejection
8. (Mohan Lal v. Sona Paint) + (Micolube v. Rakesh Kumar) – Overlapping rights
9. Nitto Denko v. Union of India – IPO backlog and processing
10. Merck v. Aprica – Conflicting decisions (Januvia)
11. Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds v. Union of India – 1st case on protection of plant varieties
12 Indian Heritage Society v. Meher Malhotra – IP and diplomatic immunity

Events:

1. Draft guidelines on Computer Related Inventions
2. Guidelines for Examination of Biotechnology Application for Patents
3. DIPP refuses CL plea for Herceptin

We’ll be keeping this open for a short while longer before finalizing the list. If any of our readers have more suggestions to send in, please do send them in quickly!