1 February 2012CopyrightMamta Jha

India: key IP developments in 2011

In 2011, IP professionals witnessed some key developments.

Legislation

The Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2011 (pending) and Trademarks (Amendment) Rules, 2011 (pending), suggest making e-filings of patent applications and trademark applications mandatory.

The Copyright Amendment Bill (pending) seeks to amend the Copyright Act 1957. It is very comprehensive and has far-reaching implications.

It will add a proviso to Clause 2(m) of the act concerning “infringing copy”: “Provided that a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy.”

The amendment indicates that India proposes to move from national to international exhaustion. The proposed amendment may dilute the right of commercial exploitation through territorial distribution and division, and instead of protecting domestic markets and industries from parallel imports from jurisdictions such as the US and the EU, the amendment may bring more challenges.

The independent rights of lyricists, composers and singers as authors of literary and musical works in films may change. Under the existing act, the right to receive royalty payments vests with music firms and producers. The new bill also proposes to treat the producer and the principal director as the joint owners of the copyright. Under the present law, only the producer enjoys such rights.

Government proposals

The government of India aims to create better IP protection with the latest technology and infrastructure. It invited the public and experts to discuss the organisational structure of the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Geographical Indications, as well as the possibility of outsourcing some prior art searching to a third party such as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The public and experts have also been invited to discuss utility models and whether utility model protection, such as in Japan and Germany, is needed to encourage innovation that does not qualify for patent protection.

Other government initiatives include:

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