COPYRIGHT
SUPER HERO “RA.One” BEFORE COPYRIGHT DISPUTE
Many Bollywood blockbuster movies have encountered problems in facing the market, due to violation of the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act. Recently Shah Rukh Khan’s latest film venture, RA.One had to bear rupees one crore, for a potential intellectual property rights violation though in this case, the court did not stay the release of the film, but rather asked SRK’s company, Red Chillies Entertainment to deposit Rs. One crore in the registry failing to which the film will not be released.
The original claim was filed several years ago by Yash Patnaik, a television writer and producer, who discussed with Mushtaq Sheikh, the script-writer for RA.One and had also registered the concept of a futuristic called ‘One’ with the Film Writer’s Association. It was contested that Sheikh used the concept discussed with him and sold the idea to Shah Rukh Khan’s production house, Red Chillies Entertainment, without recognizing the contributation made by Patnaik.
The matter came up before the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, consisting of Justices Mohit Shah and Roshan Dalvi who heard and concluded that ‘“Prima facie, the first plaintiff (Patnaik) has copyright in the concept, including the material, graphic illustrations and drawings, monograms and scenes and pictures of the flying robots in the gadgets,”. The Court agreed and upheld the contention that the character in RA.One resembled Pattanaik’s concept, in ‘attributes and appearance’. However, the matter is still pending for further final decision.
EUROPEAN UNION (EU) TO EXTEND COPYRIGHT PROTECTION FROM 50 TO 70 YEARS
Music industry will enjoy getting the royalties for a much longer period of time under a new regulation developed by the ministers of EU affairs, extending the current copyright protection for performers and record producers from 50 to 70 years. The terms of protection of copyright and certain related rights for performers and record producers are presently 50 years. The European Parliament and Council (EPC) in the recent amendments mentioned that Performers often start their careers at early stage of life and the 50-year term many times do not protect for their entire lifetimes and this may lead to an income gap later in their life. This was the reason why the term is required to be expanded to 70 years. In case of the record producers the term of protection starts when the sound recording is fixed or lawfully published or communicated to the public within 50 years after fixation.
The EPC also recommended that all 27 EU nations must incorporate the new provisions into national law within 2 years of time from the time of execution of the amendment. Though 8 countries rejected extension viz. Belgium, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden voted against the new rules, and Austria and Estonia.
This amendment will allow establishing artists to benefit from their work widely throughout this world as this will be available online during their lifetimes.
Regarding the revenue generation in the Government perspective, it is also recommends that governments require record producers to reserve 20% of the revenue from the exclusive distribution annually. Performers will have the rights in reproduction and making for whose performances were fixed in a recording and who assigned their rights to a record producer for a one-time payment.
It is also said that the rates on online infringement should not get affected by this amendments. This effort will also harmonizes the term of protection by extending it to 70 years after the death of the last person to survive, whether the author of the lyrics or the musical composer for songs and other musical works with words by several authors.
GENERAL IPR
DIGITALIZATION IN BRAND REGISTRATION TO AVOID DUPLICATION
Delhi High Court took an initiative to avoid duplication of the registration of a brand name, registered with various agencies. J R Raghvan, Registrar of Copyright stated that the process of digitalization of records cannot be initiated immediately due to a huge shortage of manpower in the department and further a minimum of 10 months to one year of time is required to the complete digitalization process. In this regard Hon’ble Justice Mittal had summoned Mr Raghvan, General Patents Designs and Trademarks Controller P H Kurian, Drugs Controller General of India Surender Singh and Registrar of Companies Manmohan Juneja in order to suggest about the steps required to avoid duplication of brand names being registered in their respective offices and there should be synchronization and transparency in the registration process so that there should not be any duplicity exists i.e a brand name once registered with one authority should not be registered again with any other authority. In an earlier case the Court was hearing a petition filed by lawyer Saikrishna Rajgopal regarding a well known International name 'Disney Enterprises inc' where Saikrishna had approached the Court to cancel the name of Disney Realtors Pvt Ltd as his client’s company as there already a registered brand by this name was existing.
Therefore the court called the heads of all the four authorities to give their valuable suggestions in this regard.
TURMOIL ENCOUNTERS INDIA’S IP TRADE POLICY
United States of America struck the bull’s eye today. They availed and took the absolute opportunity at the intellectual property rights and the policies and enforcement patterns followed by the Indian Sub-continent, thus asserting that it is out of the synchronization with international practices but stopping short of suggesting. As because the 2005 IP law is out of the compliance with the WTO rules.
In 2005 the IP Law was amended in accordance with the 1994 WTO Agreement because it was not complying accordingly with the statute relating to Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Members are allowed some room to decide by the WTO as to how they can implement agreements to the best possible standards of appropriation for their national conditions. But the IP Law followed by India and its enforcement standards and its implementation’s has been thoroughly criticized by developing nations and countries and their industries. However, India’s IP policy or the IP Law and all its allied fields haven’t been challenged by any of the governments or any other statutory body, either directly or indirectly, implied or expressed. Rather they prefer the method of pressurization as done by the United States.
As the IP Law was comparatively and relatively new, India felt the emergency for the amendment. And thus the patent law was being amended in 2005 and duly corrected, Michael Punke was the US Ambassador to the WTO, who attributed India’s success to the IP rights and proposed that in order to achieve the goals it should be strengthened and enforced. India’s IP policies and enforcement, fortunately and unfortunately, doesn’t reflect this imperative.
Legislative and other initiatives were considered to update and amend the IP policies, including the Copyright Bill before Parliament.
WIPO-WTO TO LAUNCH A NEW DATABASE FOR SHARING OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), malaria, and tuberculosis are global health issues, for which many of the private and public sector initiatives were taken to address this issue to cure and treat these deadly diseases. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) along with the World Health Organization (WHO) is in the process to launch a database for the sharing of intellectual property for research and development on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for these neglected diseases. The project is undertaken for least-developed countries and is likely to include a database and thus providing a platform for creating partnerships in sharing IP assets. The current UN definition of LDCs includes 33 countries in Africa, 15 in Asia (including several small island nations), and one in Latin America (Haiti).
The main objective of this project is to leverage the IP assets, including relevant services, to find out the discovery of new solutions for these diseases. New aspects of research and development will take place where researchers will have access to license IP for pharmaceutical compounds, technologies, know-how and sharing data to support R&D for NTDs, tuberculosis, and malaria as well as helping with negotiations of licensing agreements. This searchable database will help researchers and general people to access available IP assets and resources. Thus, new partnerships among organizations and licensing opportunities will arise to conduct research on NTDs and finding cures to all these life threatening diseases. WIPO has already added its Access to Research for Development and Innovation (ARDI) program in which, it partners with the publishing industry to aid the access of scientific and technical information for the developing countries.
