KAY & Partners — Insights
Commentary on recent judgments and regulatory developments across our practice areas. Analysis is factual and educational. Nothing here constitutes legal advice.
The Per Se Problem
India Has Been Refusing Software Patents for Two Decades. The Patent Office Has Now Explained When It Will Not.
Most people who deal with Indian patent practice know that software is difficult here, and stop there. The received position is that India does not grant software patents, and applicants with software-implemented inventi…
Read analysis →The Obviousness Shortcut
The Patent Office Revoked a Battery Patent Made From Cattle Manure. It Did Not Show Its Working.
Hindsight is the permanent occupational hazard of assessing inventive step. Once an invention has been explained, it tends to look inevitable. The components were all known. The problem was well understood. Somebody was …
Read analysis →The Price of Absence
They Kept Advertising the Drug After the Injunction. It Cost Them Ten Lakh on Top of the Damages.
Indian patent litigation has a reputation for producing injunctions and not much else. Suits are filed, interim relief is fought over at length, and then matters settle, or drift, or are quietly abandoned once the commer…
Read analysis →The Last Five Months
The Patent Had Five Months Left to Run. The Delhi High Court Let the Biosimilar In Anyway.
A patent with five months of life left is a peculiar thing to litigate. Whatever the court eventually decides about validity or infringement, the monopoly will be gone before the suit is anywhere near trial. The interim …
Read analysis →The Administration Trap
The Claim Described How the Drugs Would Be Given. The Patent Office Called That a Method of Treatment.
Section 3(i) of the Patents Act is short, and for pharmaceutical applicants it is one of the most expensive sentences in Indian law. It excludes from patentability any process for the medicinal, curative or prophylactic …
Read analysis →The Dynamic Shield
A Delhi High Court Order Now Protects Cricket Matches Before They Are Played
A rogue streaming site has one critical advantage over a rights holder seeking injunctive relief: it does not need to exist before the match starts. It can appear hours before the first ball, attract a hundred thousand v…
Read analysis →The National Register
TikTok Has Registered Trademarks in India. It Cannot Have Well-Known Status — and the Bombay High Court Explained Why the Ban Is Relevant.
In Indian trademark law, well-known status occupies a position somewhat above ordinary registered protection. A mark declared well-known — by the Registrar or by a court — can be invoked against registrations in entirely…
Read analysis →The Streaming Claim
Three Seconds of Footage, Ten Crore Rupees, and a Jurisdictional Fight That Netflix Lost Before the Trial Could Begin
The footage was brief — approximately three seconds of behind-the-scenes material from the Tamil film Naanum Rowdy Dhaan. Brevity, as any copyright lawyer will confirm, is not a defence to infringement. It is, at most, a…
Read analysis →The FRAND Equation
Lava Refused to Negotiate. An Indian Court Set the Price Anyway — Rs.244 Crore Worth.
Every smartphone sold in India relies on a small set of technologies that nobody owns outright in the ordinary sense. The AMR speech codec that makes voice calls intelligible across a congested spectrum. The EDGE protoco…
Read analysis →Page 1 of 2 — 13 articles in IPR
The analyses published here are prepared by the editorial team of KAY & Partners and are intended solely as general commentary on judicial and regulatory developments. They do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Bar Council of India Rules prohibit advocates from soliciting work or advertising in a manner that implies specialisation or past success. Nothing on this page constitutes a testimonial, endorsement, or guarantee of outcome.