HEARING OF FIRST PRODUCT PATENT OPPOSITION

The Patent Office has begun the hearing of Pegasys, India's first product patent under the new Patent Act, which had been granted to Roche India, the Indian branch of the Swiss Hoffman La Roche, and then subsequently received one of India’s first post-grant opposition in March last year.

TRADEMARK THE ANTHEM?

The organizers of the 2010 Olympics have applied for registration of 2 lines of the Canadian National Anthem as a trademark.  The trade mark would only be able to be used to crack down on traders selling Olympic merchandise, rather than people actually singing the national anthem.

PATENT SUPER HIGHWAY

The EPO has just announced that the Patent Prosecution Highway (their capitals) is due to begin on 29 September.  This scheme will allow patent applications that have been examined and allowed in either the USPTO or the EPO to be fast-tracked in the other office.  The programme will run for a trial period of 1 year, after which the offices will assess whether it is worth being fully implemented

ARRIVAL OF INTELLECTUAL VENTURES LLC

Intellectual Ventures LLC, a companyt which has courted a lot of controversy is entering the Indian market. The basic business of the company is buying of patents and then liucensing them out to others. At prsesent it is rumored that teh compnay owns around 20,000 patents.

It has entered into agremenst with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Indian Institute of Technology,Bombay and may sign an agreemt with Counsil Of Scientific and Industrila Research to take over their patents.

The company is founded by Mr. Nathan Myhrvold who was tye former Cheif Technology officer of Microsoft.

CIPLA TAKE'S ON ROCHE (Part II)

Cipla recently introduced Valcept, a generic equivalent of Roche's patented Valcyte, an anti infective predominantly used by HIV patients:

"This is the second instance of Cipla launching a low-cost version of Roche’s patent-protected drug after India's amended patent law began to recognise product patents or patents for specific drugs instead of protection to the processes through which medicines are produced. While Roche had dragged Cipla to the court on the earlier occasion, it is yet to seek legal remedy on valganciclovir.

WIPO DIRECTOR-GENERAL SPEECH

 World Intellectual Property Organization Director-General Francis Gurry, made a very eloquent acceptance speech in whihc he outlined the development of IP and the various issues regarding it.The entire text of the speech can be found at this link,

http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/dgo/dg_gurry_acceptance_speech_2008.html

HARRY POTTER v. HARI PUTTAR

Warner Bros. have lost the case against the movie Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors. The judge noted that the plaintiffs did not establish irreparable loss or damage that would be caused to them by the release of the film.

The timing of the suit was also brought into question and played  major part in the decision as the suit was brought just before the release of the film. The judge remarked that the defendants had painstakingly put together the movie and the plaintiff's had not objected before. When they had reached the finishing line, the plaintiffs put up the objection thus trying to stop the defendants from completing their goal and to cross the finishing line. Their conduct is is diametrically opposed to the cardinal principle of vigilentibus non dormientibur enquitor and cannot be countenanced by a Court bound to take into consideration legal as well as equitable considerations.

The judge also made remarks to the effect  that the audience would know the difference between the book and the movie as the stories are different and the viewer would in no way be confused.

The judge dismissed the above argument with the following comments:

E]ven assuming there is any structural or phonetic similarity in the words ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Hari Puttar’, what has to be borne in mind is that the Harry Potter films are targeted to meet the entertainment needs of an elite and exclusive audience—the cognoscenti - an audience able to discern the difference between a film based on Harry Potter book on the one hand and a film which is a Punjabi comedy on the other, the chief protagonist of which is Hariprasad Dhoonda. It is not the case of a consumer good or product, which stands on an entirely different footing.

Necessarily, the yardstick must also differ bearing in mind the fact that a consumer product such as a soap or even a pharmaceutical product may be purchased by an unwary purchaser or even an illiterate one, but the possibility of an unlettered audience viewing a Harry Potter movie are remote to say the least. To put it differently an illiterate or semi-literate movie viewer in case he ventures to see a film by the name of Hari Puttar would never be able to relate the same with a Harry Potter film or book. Conversely, an educated person who has pored over or even browsed through a book on Harry Potter or viewed a Harry Potter film, is not likely to be misled. Such a person must be taken to be astute enough to know the difference between a Harry Potter film and a film entitled Hari Puttar, for, in my view, the cognoscenti, the intellectuals and even the pseudo-intellectuals presumably know the difference between chalk and cheese or at any rate must be presumed to know the same.