News
Trademarks – Not every domain name entitled to trademark protection
07 October 2016
Bombay High Court has refused to grant an interim injunction in a suit for trademark infringement and passing off in favour of the plaintiff, who is the registered proprietor of the mark and domain name “shaadi.com”.
Trademarks – Opposition or non-grant of trademark registration immaterial in case of passing off
07 October 2016
Delhi High Court on 16-9-2016 has made absolute the interim injunction granted by it to restrain the defendant from copyright infringement in the trade label along with a device and for passing off its trademark with device of “Taj Mahal” used on the rice.
Copyrights – Photocopying of portion of book when is not infringement
07 October 2016
Delhi High Court on 16-9-2016 has held that action of the University (defendant) of making a master photocopy of the relevant portions of the books purchased by it and keeping in its library, making further photocopies out of the said master copy and distributing the same to the students does not constitute infringement of copyright in the said books.
Copyright of author in a song and sound recording, prior to 2012 amendment
07 October 2016
The Supreme Court on 20-9-2016 has held that prior to the amendment in 2012, to the Copyright Act, 1957 the author of copyright in a work (song) could not claim royalty for further exploitation of derivative work (sound recording).
Testing whether a transaction is sale or service
29 September 2016
The High Court of Bombay in [Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (India) P Ltd v. UOI, 2016 (44) S.T.R 161 (Bom.)] examined whether the transaction undertaken by the petitioners would be exigible to service tax or to VAT where the petitioners were involved in different transactions though both urged that their transaction was a service and not a sale.
Websites containing pirated/illegal content to be blocked, and not URLs alone
14 September 2016
The Division Bench of the Delhi High Court has allowed the review petition and recalled its order dated March 10, 2016 which restricted the span of the ex-parte ad-interim injunction by directing that the specific URL should be blocked.
Trademarks – No case of passing off in use of word ‘Privee’
14 September 2016
The High Court of Delhi on 8-8-2016 has dismissed the suit for permanent injunction to restrain the defendant from using trademark “PRIVEE” or any other trademark or logo / device which is identical or deceptively similar to the plaintiffs’ trademark “MBD PRIVE” and “PRIVE” or which incorporates the word “PRIVE”.
Restoration of name of company with Registrar of Companies
14 September 2016
The name of the petitioner company was struck off from the register of companies. The petitioner in this regard alleged that due procedure has not been followed by the Registrar inasmuch as no notices/ letters were received by the petitioner and no hearing was afforded to them, as mandated under Section 560 of Companies Act, 1956.
Environmental clearance - Requirement of public consultation, mandatory
14 September 2016
An appeal was brought before the Supreme Court challenging the order passed by the High Court which had set aside the environmental clearance granted to the appellant in the year 2010 (“EC”) for expansion of its steel plant on the ground that the said EC was granted relying on the public consultation carried out earlier in the year 2007; and that no fresh public consultation had been done for the latest expansion of the steel plant of the appellant.
Withdrawal of public offer when not possible
14 September 2016
Consequent to the open offer made by the acquirers, intending to acquire 75% equity share of the target company, the target company informed SEBI of it being registered with BIFR and stating that it was a sick company.