IPRs are the legal protections for the innovative and creative works of creators and inventors. These rights encourage creativity and technological development since they provide creators with the possibility of earning from their efforts. Different IPRs, like copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial designs, geographical indications, and trade secrets, deal with protecting various aspects of intellectual creations.

Below are ten important case law precedents led by the best-known brands that have played critical precedent in the development within the field of IP law and provide an improved understanding of the application as well as the interpretation of the such rights at the worldwide level:

• PEPSICO INDIA LIMITED VS. GUJARAT POTATO FARMERS

In a case of, Pepsi Co.India Limited sued nine farmers on April 5, 2019, in three courts in the districts of Sabarkantha, Aravalli, and Deesa and Banaskantha in the state of Gujarat. The case was filed regarding the cultivation and selling of the FC5 variety of potatoes, for which, under Section 28 of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001, Pepsi Co claimed exclusive rights. Pepsi Co claimed that the farmers had violated its rights in intellectual property and demanded compensation ranging from ₹2 million to ₹10 million.

This case quickly became a major controversy, receiving high public and media attention. A broad range of farmers’ rights activists and organizations mobilized for the farmers, raising the argument that PPVFR had been designed to ensure protection of the farmers’ rights, for savings, use, sowing, resowing, exchange, share, or sell of farm produce, including the produce of the protected varieties. The protesters argued that the nature of Pepsi Co’s legal moves was malodorous under the Act and harassment of poor, small-scale farmers. The public outcry was immense, with several protests supporting the rights of farmers and advocates in social media campaigns to boycott all Pepsi Co India products across the country. It has also exposed conflicts raised by corporate intellectual property assertions of some firms and traditional agricultural practice in India, among others. Finally, as the protests were gaining strength, and the adverse publicity was hitting hard, Pepsi Co India relented and withdrew the lawsuits against the farmers.

Now it would prefer to have a negotiated settlement and make sure that the rights of the farmers are protected. A victory for the rights of the farmers, indeed, this judgment served as a reminder to companies to strike a balance between their interests and the rights available to the farmers under Indian laws. The case of Pepsi Co India Limited vs. Gujarat Potato Farmers is a primary example of the challenges and controversies that inescapably lie and really all too often crop up at the intersection of intellectual property rights with agricultural practice and further how clear, equitable regulations ought to safeguard the interests of all those directly involved. 

• VLSI TECHNOLOGIES V. INTEL CORPORATION   NO. 6:21-CV-00057 (W.D. TEX. 2021)

This case explains the recent legal fight between VLSI Technologies and Intel Corporation has been the subject of keen anticipation in the technological as well as legal fraternities. On a rather negative note, the appeals court in Washington made it clear that Intel had, in fact, violated a patent owned by VLSI. Nonetheless, it raised objections to the method of damages analysis and ordered a retrial to establish the correct award. The jury had first decided to award VLSI up to $1.5 billion for a patent that Intel had infringed. Intel’s stock slid following the ruling, down more than 4% in Monday morning trading.

That slide spilled over into other major chipmakers’ stock, too. In the other major trial held in Waco later in 2021, Intel was found not liable and for more than $3 billion in damages claimed by VLSI. Alternatively, in a jury trial in Austin, Texas, VLSI has won majorly and was awarded almost $949 million from Intel in another patent case, their third highest. The high stakes and high profile of the present litigation between the two technology behemoths underpins how complex and high-stakes patent infringement cases can be within the semiconductor industry. Add to this a strong emphasis on increased patent protection that has a significant financial impact on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

• APPLE INC. V. SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. 11-CV-01846, N.D. CAL. 2011

The most standing-out case of patent infringement in the technology sector is the legal dispute between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

The case, filed before the Court on May 12, 2011, was an action brought by Apple for expedited discovery. According to Apple, Samsung had infringed on its trademarks, trade dress, and utility and design patents. Apple had thus requested an order for Samsung to be compulsorily produced with samples of products, marketing, and relevant documents, and a corporate witness under Rule 30(b)(6) on an expedited basis in order to support the charges. The Court has reviewed Apple’s requests and arguments on the May 12, 2011, hearing. Based on the review, Apple said the requested infringing products of Samsung bears striking similarities to Apple’s iconic designs and functionalities. Apple underlined that they urgently need to obtain discovery materials in order to prevent more market confusion and possible damage to their brand. Apple moved for expedited discovery to prepare themselves for the upcoming stages of litigation and rehearing of the request for preliminary injunctive relief.

The Court took seriously Apple’s allegations and ordered limited expedited discovery that might help demonstrate the allegations and could influence the case to both parties’ advantage. This includes required examples of products that Apple says have been copied, some of the marketing materials that can portray how Samsung is describing those portrayed products, along with the internal documents relevant to the accusation. The Court also required a 30(b)(6) corporate witness from Samsung to testify about the design, development, and marketing strategies pursued with respect to the products at issue.

This is formally the case of Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and it was the opening shot in one of the lengthiest and most highly publicized legal wars that two technology giants have waged against each other. This fast-track discovery gave Apple the opportunity to gather crucial evidence that the company will need at an early stage of litigation, which will be integral to their takedown strategy.Over the course of the proceedings, Apple and Samsung went through extensive legal maneuvers, with lots of arguments and counter-arguments. After all these maneuvers, the case was finally taken to trial, then had several appeals afterward that defined patent law and how the tech industry would do businesses involving intellectual property rights.

This case only highlights the importance of intellectual properties in the technology sector and how the top players are scrambling one over the other to retain the share of the market pie, particularly for new-generation products. The outcome of these litigation will decide the path that product design and development will likely take in the industry.

• ROCHE PRODUCTS (INDIA) PVT. LTD. V. CIPLA LTD.  2008 (37) PTC 71 (DEL)

Roche Products (India) Pvt. Ltd v. Cipla Ltd is an important case in Indian patent law between the Roche Group, a world-famous Swiss multinational healthcare company, and Cipla, an Indian multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company. The Roche case mainly concerned the infringement of the patent in the Erlocip drug.

In the present case, Roche claimed an infringement of its patent by the act of unauthorized manufacture and selling of Erlocip by Cipla. The decision went in favor of Roche, laying down some very important principles on different aspects of law relating to patent infringement in India.

The court ordered an account of all revenues that Cipla had earned from the manufacture and sale of Erlocip and awarded costs amounting to Rs. 5,00,000 to Roche. The court did not, however, grant a permanent injunction restraining Cipla from manufacturing Erlocip.

The aforesaid ruling was, in fact, significant to Indian patent jurisprudence, since it cleared much of the drift pertaining to the liability for patent infringement, the damages and the grant of injunction. It not only accentuates the necessity of protection of intellectual property rights over pharmaceutical inventions but also forms itself as various jurisdiction for patent disputes in the years to come.

Citation: Roche Products (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Cipla Ltd., [2012] (49) PTC 348 (Del).

The abstract will be very brief, covering the general and essential facts of the case as well as the outcome of the case for parties.

• HINDUSTAN UNILEVER LIMITED V. GUJARAT COOPERATIVE MILK MARKETING FEDERATION  LTD , 2017 SCC ONLINE BOM 8677

Introduction- The clash of Hindustan Unilever Limited v. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. is centered around the disputable question regarding comparative advertisement and ambit of permissible bounds of commercial speech inside India.

The legal tussle ensued as the two television advertisements by Amul, facilitated by GCMF, insinuated that consumers should reach out for an ice cream like Amul with real milk, unlike the “frozen desserts” laced with vanaspati or vegetable oil. The ads ran with the tagline, “Amul is real milk, Real ice cream,” thereby putting across to consumers that frozen desserts, including those manufactured by Hindustan Unilever Limited, were of an inferior quality in comparison to their ice cream. HUL filed a case against GCMF stating “generic disparagement/slander of goods” with respect to frozen dessert products. They claimed the advertisements had been taking potshots at the whole category of frozen desserts, which actually made HUL prone to market reputation and loss of sales. The Bombay High Court, headed by Justice S J Kathawalla, gave the order to prevent the release of Amul’s ads.

Justice Kathawalla, in his ruling, accepted that even though the objective behind the Amul advertisements would be to bring it to the notice of the public at large as to how the frozen desserts were being made, the methodology adopted was disparaging.

He furthered that the advertisements ran down the entire category of frozen desserts just because they used ‘vanaspati,’ by implication, saying that they were inferior because of this ingredient, causing confusion to the public. The court ruled that in such an advertisement, though apparently informative, there was misleadingly wrong information that would lead the public against the reputation of the products, which were in conformation with all the legal and safety standards. This case set a precedent in the field of comparative advertisement within India.

It was also made very clear by the court that, though comparative advertisement is permissible, it definitely need not reach the level of ridicule or defamation of the competitor’s products. In short, advertising can indicate the positives of one’s product at the expense of the product of competitors, a setup that is permissible- described as “puffing” -but only if without trashing the products of one’s competitors. The comparative advertisement, it added had has, to be honest and truthful and that no simulation and avoid undue comparison. 

• FOGERTY V. FANTASY, INC., 510 U.S. 517 (1994)

John Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc. is certainly one of the strangest copyright battles ever to find itself within a courtroom: a record label suing a musician for ripping off his own music. John Fogerty is a widely known singer and songwriter; he was also a main member of the hard-rocking band Creedence Clearwater Revival. After Fogerty had left the group and finally went solo, he remained steadfastly successful during that time in the 1980s. The trouble began when Fogerty released a song entitled “The Old Man Down the Road.” The record company, Fantasy Records, owned the rights to CCR’s music and said that Fogerty had stolen a song that he himself wrote and sang with CCR — “Run Through the Jungle.” Indeed, he was being sued for sounding too much like himself.

But, weirdly, it boiled down to a verdict about self-plagiarized infringement.

The court ruled in favor of Fogerty and eventually declared, “You can’t rip somebody off if they are ripping off you.” This ruling of the courts finally put to rest the argument about whether an artist can be held accountable for creating a new composition that is substantially the same in spirit and tone to one’s old material. The court decision was littered with derision and reinforced the conclusion that there are certain things artists just should not be sued for and this was one of them. After successfully defending his case, Fogerty brought a counter suit against Fantasy for his attorney fees he accrued while litigating the case.

His counter suit eventually went to the Supreme Court of the U.S. This seminal case, Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517 (1994), provided that the facts of the case simply did not cry consonance with the very underlying object of copyright law. The values of copyright legislation should protect creative efforts, not assault new creation through frivolous litigation. Moreover, this ruling by the Supreme Court made a conscious effort not to place an unreasonable legal burden on an artist because, naturally, most of his or her future creations would have an imprint of his or her former works. This decision also established a precedent for the award of attorney’s fees to the prevailing defendant in copyright cases in order to discourage groundless claims and make sure that copyright law would indeed achieve the goal of promoting creativity and innovation.

• CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN S.A. V. YVES SAINT LAURENT AMERICA  696 F.3d 206 (2d Cir. 2012)

The case of Christian Louboutin S.A. v. Yves Saint Laurent America Holding, Inc. is a benchmark in the law of marks, in individual color mark protection and the doctrine of aesthetic functionality. He claimed that Yves Saint Laurent had infringed on its trade marks through its design of a red pump monochrome business shoe, also with a red sole. The judgment emanating from the Second Circuit incorporates the following core principles of the trademark law.

To appreciate fully the court’s decision here, one must be familiar with the overall scheme of trademark law and the policy reasons under girding the extension of protection to a holder of a mark. Trademarks are source indicators for goods and services, so that consumers do not become confused about who produces an article. In applying its prior holding in the matter at hand, the court inquired into the protect-ability of Louboutin’s mark – the single-color mark on a shoe sole – under two inquiries, the former of which was undoubtedly set to defeat the rights of the fashion house. The court held that the doctrine of aesthetic functionality did not make Louboutin’s trademark invalid. Aesthetic functionality operates when a product feature is ‘essential to the use of the article or it affects the cost or quality of the article,’ thus needing to be available for all to use. The court decided that Louboutin’s red sole could meet none of these tests because fundamentally it was all about branding rather than being functional.

It was, however, very controversial, the extent to which the court judged its decision to the doctrine of trademark use, in determining the claim of infringement. The doctrine of trademark use decides whether the use of mark by accused is in the sense of trademark, which shows the origin of products, or in a descriptive sense. It found that the use of the red sole on a monochrome shoe was not trademark use but an artistic decision and this would not refer, or suggest Louboutin in any way. It is this fact that enabled the court to stand on this reliance, rather than entering fully into this likelihood of confusion analysis, which is otherwise central to trademark infringement cases, in striking down Louboutin claims of infringement. The decision raised questions about the effect of the trademark-use doctrine and whether it may supersede the fact-intensive approach to likelihood of confusion. While some language in the court’s various decisions still reflects that the doctrine more generally might undergo an extensive likelihood of confusion consideration in a different setting, its use of the trademark-use doctrine in this setting extinguishes that possibility.

• ORACLE AMERICA, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC, 141 S. Ct. 1183 (2021)

The Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC case has relatively been a landmark in the progress of copyright law, more importantly, their doctrine of fair use. In 2021, the Supreme Court decided that modern copyright law shall have substantial bearing on the constitutional objectives which it has to achieve. Here the unauthorized use of Oracle’s code for Java SE by Google in its Android operating system became the point of contention. Oracle had accused Google of a copyright violation since it had copied 11,500 lines of the code, to which Google responded that its use of the code was an exception through the doctrine of fair use. In the end, the Supreme Court went on to say that it was Google and cited the transformative use Google made of it.

The Court also recognized that the doctrine of fair use may have expanded in scope since the time of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., but such expansion was necessary to correct an overly restrictive status quo of copyright. Indeed, this case strengthens the reasoning for lower courts to grant flexibility and allow transformative uses of the functional nature of software. Functions in software are often of crucial importance for reasons of innovation. It simply limits the rights of the copyright holders and furthers the constitutional aim of the copyright law—i.e., to promote the progress of science and useful arts. The ruling of the Court is thus a much-needed counterbalance to help ensure that copyright does not become a tool in the stifling of creativity and technological progress. In application to this case, the doctrine of fair use is a very powerful tool that supports new and innovative uses of existing works to assure greater progress in science and the arts.

• NARUTO V. SLATER 888 F.3d 418 (9 th Cir. 2018)

The case of Naruto v. David Slater is related to the singular and contentious issue of animal rights in the context of copyright law. In 2011, Naruto, a crested macaque, took a series of selfies using the camera belonging to photographer David Slater. Slater published a book containing these pictures and sold it; one of his photographs became too popular on the internet. In response, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a lawsuit on behalf of Naruto as next friend and claimed Slater had committed copyright infringement by publishing the “monkey selfies.”

It is on this ground that arguments were heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in this landmark case. The PETA contended that since the selfies were made by Naruto, he should hold the copyright to the photos. Slater, on the other hand, postulated that under existing copyright law, animals cannot hold copyrights reserved only for human creators. In the end, the Ninth Circuit court sided with Slater by fleshing out that animals enjoy no legal standing to sue for copyright infringement pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution.

Although the Ninth Circuit decided its ruling based on a lack of similar cases in other circuits, the case nevertheless embodied some encouraging internal court disagreements about Article III standing. This proves that the broader questions posed by this case have not been quite resolved and may still give rise to further legal challenges and associated discourses over the extent of copyright law and animal rights.

Naruto case finished up resolving with a settlement providing that Slater would give 25 percent of his future proceeds from the selfies to charities concerned with the protection of crested macaques’ habitats. A case which has settled with no doubt shutting the doors to further litigation over similar issues in the near or far future.

• FMC CORPORATION & ORS. V. NATCO PHARMA LIMITED, [2018] EWHC 2993 (CH)

In the pharmaceutical field, a very important example of patent infringement is FMC Corporation & Ors. versus Natco Pharma Limited. According to facts, FMC Corporation, through its co-plaintiffs, alleged that Natco Pharma Limited infringed on their patent for the chemical compound Chlorantraniliprole, which is used as an insecticide in agriculture. The FMC patent not only covered the compound but the method of manufacturing it.

FMC had claimed that Natco Pharma was infringing on its patent rights by using a similar process to manufacture CTPR. The case brought into sharp relief the complexities of patent laws in the pharmaceutical sector, which are founded on proprietorial process patents and compounds, hold the key to competitive advantage, and in effect, encourage innovative trails.

The ruling in this case much further underscored the reduction to practice of patented methods of production of compounds as much as the compounds themselves, under intellectual property law. This judgment by Delhi High Court came in favor of FMC Corporation. It held that even minor changes in manufacturing processes still rightfully remain an infringement if they come within the ambit of the patented method.

Author: Tanya Kathuria, a final-year BBA LLB student at Shree Guru Gobind Singh Tricentenary University, has interned with notable legal entities such as the Ministry of Law and Justice and the Competition Commission of India. She excels in legal research, has presented research at various platforms, and achieved recognition in moot court competitions.