One more shot at Keyword Advertising……. aaaannndd Hit Wicket!

/ By / Trademark

On 22 May 2026 the Delhi High Court held that Google infringes the trademark HINDWARE by letting rival sanitary ware sellers bid on that word as a Google Ads keyword. Arul Murugan’s detailed post summarizing the dispute and holdings is here. This post is more about its critique. In a rare final judgment or decree, the HC moves in three steps – allowing to bid on a keyword is “use” of the mark; that keyword is used by Google and […]

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Part II: From the Archives: When Oxford Sent a Letter to Amend the Indian Copyright Law in 1901

/ By / Others

Salam, In the previous post, I discussed the Oxford letter, which was itself merely a response to an increasingly contentious issue: translation. Here, I turn to the broader context of nineteenth-century Indian copyright law and revisit two landmark decisions that left British publishers deeply dissatisfied, prompting a letter in response. Translation as Troublemaker for Publishers Now comes the main thing: translation. Printing arguably entered India in the sixteenth century, on September 6, 1556, by something of a happy accident, when

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Oxford, Clarendon Building

Part I: From the Archives: When Oxford Sent a Letter to Amend the Indian Copyright Law in 1901 

/ By / Copyright, Others

Namaskar, It is easy—and intuitive too—to suppose that Indian copyright law was nothing but British law imposed upon India. Plausible though the assumption may appear, the reality was more meandering and infinitely more intriguing. The deeper one delves, the clearer it becomes how confounding the history of Indian copyright is and how much of its buried past still awaits excavation. In this post, I untangle one of its many threads. A few months ago, while rummaging through the archives at

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The Copyright Strike as a Commercial Weapon: What Anamika Sood v. Saregama Does Not Say But Should

/ By / Copyright

What happens when copyright enforcement tools become instruments of commercial control rather than legal protection? In a significant ruling in Anamika Sood v. Google LLC & Saregama India Ltd., the Saket District Court declared independent artist Anamika Sood the rightful owner of her song “Ferrareee”, rejecting Saregama’s infringement claims over an expired copyright. But while the judgment resolves the ownership dispute, it leaves unresolved a larger structural concern: the growing misuse of automated copyright strike systems as tools of market

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Public Squares or Private Estates: The Delhi High Court’s Doctrinal Shift in Keyword Advertising

/ By / Trademark

In a significant ruling in Hindware v. Grohe, the Delhi High Court drew a distinction between the use of generic marks and coined, source-identifying marks like “Hindware” as keywords, while simultaneously narrowing the scope of intermediary safe harbour for platforms such as Google. The ruling builds on precedents such as Google v. DRS Logistics and Google LLC v. MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt. Ltd, where the courts have resisted treating keyword bidding as per se trademark infringement, particularly where the marks involved

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A Brief History of the Official Language(s) of International Copyright Law

/ By / Copyright, Others

Bonjour. Today, I want to talk about something French. No, not wine. Not even cheese. But the French language, and my hobbyhorse: international copyright law. Here’s the story of why the beating heart of the Berne Convention still pulsates in French. As Article 37 of the Convention clarifies, while the Convention is drafted in both French and English, in the event of divergence, the French text prevails. Every time I glide through the Berne archives in French, I’m reminded: this

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SpicyIP Bells & Whistles: IP Events and Opportunities (26.05.2026)

/ By / Courses & Workshops, Opportunities

Welcome back to another week of Bells & Whistles. As always, we’ve rounded up a mix of developments, opportunities, and thoughtful reads from across the IP world along with a Bell of the Week that’s well worth revisiting. Bell of the Week: Public Library of Science (PLOS) Some bells do not just chime, they widen access. This week’s bell is for the Public Library of Science, an initiative that helped reshape conversations around scientific publishing and access to knowledge. For a

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Image with SpicyIP logo and the words "Weekly Review"

SpicyIP Weekly Review (May 18 – May 24)

/ By / Copyright, Others, Patent, Trademark

Entering the last week of May with a post tracing Indian copyright doctrine and what exactly does it protect. Post on the Delhi HC’s ruling in Bansal v. Philips, a consequential SEP/FRAND decision. And a post on the expanding and increasingly amorphous scope of personality rights in India, most recently in the case of Aniruddhacharya Ji Maharaj. Case summaries and IP developments from the country and the globe and much more in this week’s SpicyIP Weekly Review. Anything we are

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In the Aftermath of Parle: Unsettling Questions for Trade Mark Law

/ By / Trademark

What happens when trademark law privileges filing priority over marketplace reality? The Delhi High Court’s April 10 ruling in the ‘20-20’ dispute raises difficult questions about whether registration can meaningfully coexist with decade-old goodwill, and whether identical marks can survive in the market outside the framework of honest and concurrent use. In this post, Eleen Garg examines the structural tensions the decision leaves unresolved between registry formalism, consumer protection, and passing off. Eleen is a lawyer and is practicing before

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Defragmenting the “Work” : A Critique of Ivy Entertainment’s “Hook” Injunction

/ By / Copyright, Innovation

On 15 May 2026, a Single Judge of the Delhi High Court passed an ex parte ad-interim order in Ivy Entertainment v. Rahul Singh restraining the defendants from making any use of one line of lyric, jaane meri janeman bachpan ka pyar bhool nahi jaana re, on the footing that this fragment is the “distinctive hook line” of a song in which the plaintiff, an acquisition vehicle that purchased a portfolio of 1,250 songs in November 2025, claims copyright. The

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