Our Highlight of the Week was Rupali’s post on the Delhi High Court’s order in the Glenmark-Symed dispute regarding the former’s ‘linezolid API’ drug. The Division Bench order vacated injunction granted by the Single Judge to Synoid against Glenmark, and specified the arrangement that is to be followed by the parties in the time period of the suit. She notes in her post that in light of the Symed’s concessions that Glenmark’s process was not identical and does not infringe on its patent, there does not seem to be any cause of action remaining in the suit. She concludes by noting that this case, and the doubt it creates regarding the other ex parte injunctions granted to Symed, is a perfect illustration of the underlying faults in the litigation process.
Our first post of the week was Gopika’s coverage of the Exegesis v. Medimanage case, which dealt with the issue of software copyright and commissioned works. The Plaintiff in the case had developed certain software on commission for the Defendant, and had filed an interlocutory injunction application to restrain the Defendant from sharing the software’s source code till the issue of ownership was ascertained. The Court here reserved most issues for the trial itself, but considered the issue of the existence of an ‘agreement to the contrary’ in favour of the copyright remaining with the plaintiff. After a detailed analysis of the facts, the Court concluded that prima facie no such agreement existed, and in fact that the available evidence was very much in favour of the Defendant. It thus refused to grant the injunction, and refused the Plaintiff’s breach of confidentially claim as well.
This was followed by a Guest Post by Rahul Bajaj on Traditional Knowledge – specifically, he argues for the creation of a Sui Generis framework for the protection of Tradition Knowledge (‘TK’). He points out that due to the government’s failure to highlight the policy goals of the TK regime and the extant measures’ failure to recognise the difference between TK and intellectual property law, the TK regime is currently falling far shorts of its ideal purposes. He then proposes five cardinal principles that must underlie the TK regime to make it effective, and details the modalities of the proposed regime.
Our last post of the week was Kiran’s announcement of the National Patent Drafting Competition being organised by the IIPRD between September 1 and 25.
Rajiv also mailed out to our subscribers a notification by the Patent Office, looking for new examiners for patents and designs. More details about the same are available here.
National Developments
1. The final draft of India’s IPR Policy has reportedly been circulated.
International Developments
1. MSF Warns Successful Global HIV Response Will Require Bigger Emphasis on Adherence.
2. Doctors object to high cancer drug prices (Wall Street Journal).
3. Google announces the Patent Starter Program for startups to help them fight patent trolls by giving them a pair of ‘starter-patents’.