News Updates

We bring you the updates for last week. Hope it updates you with all the news from legal world.

15 December 2014

The Bombay High Court refused to entertain a Writ filed by an advocate challenging the imposition of service tax on advocates. So the business clients of individual lawyers and law firms will continue to pay service tax as mandated by the Finance Act.

16 December 2014

In the case of Italian Marines who are accused of killing two Indian fishermen, the Supreme Court denied the plea of one Italian Marine to extend the stay in Italy on health grounds and the plea of the other Marine to travel to Italy for Christmas. The Court held that they want the system to work and that the relief cannot be granted even though the trial has not commenced. Therefore, the accused must come to India and the charge-sheet be filed.

17 December 2014

The Delhi High Court which had earlier passed an ex-parte ad-interim injunction against the Chinese manufacturer, Xiaomi, allowed the company to sell and import handsets which have chipsets of Qualcomm Inc., till 5 February 2015. Xiaomi argued that Erricsson had suppressed the facts to obtain an injunction. Qualcomm has a license from Erricsson and therefore the license does not make Xiaomi an infringer of Ericsson’s patent rights.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) on 17 December ordered that information relating to the death of the former Chief Justice of India J S Verma be disclosed to RTI activist Mr. S C Agrawal. The Commissioner, M Sridhar Acharyulu said, “Such letters (documents) from eminent citizens from all walks of life on death of a devoted and honest jurist who spent his post-retirement life in a rented house is indeed a matter of serious concern”.

18 December 2014

The Supreme Court bench has extended the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalthaa’s bail by 4 months and directed the Karnataka High Court to constitute a special bench to hear her appeal expeditiously and decide it within 3 months, till 18 April 2015. The former CM challenged her conviction in Karnataka High Court in a ‘Disproportionate Assets Case’ after being found guilty.

19 December 2014

Three judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals in relation to the Coal Ordinance. The deadline to pay the penalty is 31 December which was marked from 24 September judgment in which the 214 of the 218 coal blocks allocations was quashed.

22 December 2014

The Allahabad High Court dismissed a batch of Writ Petitions which were filed praying for protection as a married couple as they had tied the knot after the girls got their religion converted from Hindu to Islam and then performed Nikah. The court observed that “Conversion to another religion basically requires change of faith and belief of personal relations of a major individual of sound mind by his free will, with what he/she regards as cosmos, his/her Make or Creator, which he/she believes, regulates the existence of insentient beings and the forces of Universe.”

24 December 2014

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has released the 1^st draft on the National IPR Policy submitted by the ‘Think Tank’ chaired by Justice Prabha Sridevan. The draft policy can be accessed here.

26 December 2014

The Delhi High Court issued a notice to RBI on the decision to impose a limit of five transactions per month from the customers’ own bank ATM and charging Rs. 20/- per transaction beyond it. RBI had also imposed a limit of three transactions per month from ATMs of other banks, located in the six metro centres- Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. During the hearing, the court said, “You (banks) are unnecessary taxing your account holders.” The response has been sought by 18 February 2015.

The Delhi High Court distinguished between Uber and Ola cabs and refused to give a similar order in favor or Uber. Ola was given relief as they are only a technology platform and not a radio taxi operator. The court observed that ‘You (Uber) take money from customers and give it to drivers. So you are providing the service.’ By the virtue of December 8 Government Order, Uber had been effectively banned in India.

We hope that this summarizes the News from 15th to 27th December . Your comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Until next post of weekly News updates.

Wishing you all a very delightful and successful New Year. 

Manish Kumar, (3rd Year student of IIT Kharagpur Law School)

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.

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Legal News Updates

We bring you the updates for last week. Hope it updates you with all the news from legal world.

Updates: 23rd November to 07 November 2014.

The Supreme Court has constituted a Special Bench christened ‘Social Justice Bench’ to achieve the Constitutional  goal of securing ‘social justice for the citizens of the country. The bench comprising of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice UU Lalit will hear all cases in the Supreme Court falling within the domain of “social justice”. The Bench will start functioning from December 12 and will sit at 2 pm on every Friday.

The Centre is planning to partially open up legal market to foreign firms. According to the proposal put forward by the Centre, foreign lawyers could be permitted to practice in India in conjunction with Indian lawyers, as a joint venture, with a cap on foreign participation. Also, advisory or non-litigious services in Indian law could be opened up subject to foreign lawyers going through a prequalification examination in various aspects of Indian law. However, the Bar Council of India and Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) have voiced their opposition to this proposal.

The Delhi High Court refused to quash the FIR filed against three men who tried to molest a Delhi Police Constable. The woman registered an FIR against the three persons, who incidentally lived in her locality only. She later agreed to take back her complaint, after the intermediation of some people. When the matter reached the Delhi High Court for quashing of FIR, Justice Pratibha Rani, refusing to quash the FIR said, ‘if a woman police officer can’t walk on the street what will happen to common girls?’

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister has approved the introduction of the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2014 in Parliament to make certain amendments in the Companies Act, 2013. The Companies Act, 2013 (Act) was notified on 29.8.2013. Out of 470 sections in the Act, 283 sections and 22 sets of Rules corresponding to such sections have so far been brought into force. In order to address some issues raised by stakeholders such as Chartered Accountants and professionals, some amendments have been proposed.

The Allahabad High Court dismissed a PIL challenging Rule 7 of the recently released Bar Council of India Rules, 2014. Under Rule 7, a lawyer must practice for two years in a trial court and three in a high court before being allowed to practice before the apex court. It was dismissed not on merits, but on the ground that Rule 7 has still not been notified and therefore it would be an exercise in futility if the petition is examined on merits.

The Delhi High Court has held that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has the right to file an appeal in cases where its probes have been stayed by courts. The order came after a CCI appeal in a dispute involving JCB India Ltd, in which all CCI proceedings, including the probe, were stayed by the HC after its director general raided JCB’s premises. Doubts were raised whether CCI could file such an appeal, as it was the CCI that ordered the probe against JCB in the first place; the court ruled that CCI has the right. The court also held that “the interference by us at this stage is unwarranted”. It asked both parties to raise their issues before the single judge who is hearing the case.

The Delhi High Court recently interpreted S.107A expansively to conclude that it is applicable when a party exports a patented product to a third party outside India as long as the purpose of export is the facilitation of research. The case relates to the Compulsory License granted by the Court to Natco for the compound Sorafenib tosylate. One of the conditions was that Natco should use the licensed product “solely for the purpose of making, using, offering for sale and selling the drug covered by the patent for the purpose of treating HCC and RCC in humans within the territory of India”. However, Bayer found that Natco was exporting the product outside India. In March this year, an interim order was passed by the Delhi High Court preventing Natco from such export. The present application was filed by Natco to seek permission from the Court to export 1 kilogram of Sorafenib to a Chinese Pharmaceutical Company for preparation of a trial batch of the generic drug in China.

The application filed by Venus Remedies Ltd. (the applicant) for an invention titled “Parenteral Composition Comprising Ceftriaxone and Vancomycin for Bacterial Resistance and Process of Preparation Thereof” was opposed in a pre grant opposition by (Akums Drugs & Pharmaceuticals) on the grounds of lack of inventive step as required under Section 2(1)(j), 2(1)(ja) and 2(1)(l) and also on the grounds of section 3(d) and 3(e) of the Patent Act. The opposition, however, was not successful. The invention was a single unit combination of two incompatible antibiotics (Ceftriaxone and Vancomycin) which are combined together with stabilizing agents, such as L-arginine, EDTA and Na₂CO_3.  The Controller observed that the claimed invention was held not to be a mere aggregation of property/features since Ceftriaxone and Vancomycin are made compatible, due to the existence of a chemical stabilizing and solubizing agent. The opponent also contended that various studies have shown the concomitant use of vancomycin and ceftriaxone and cited two documents.  However, both these documents failed to form ‘prior art’ because they were published on 3/3/2006 and 20/12/2005 after the filing of the present patent application in 14/2/2005. Moreover, the prior art failed to contemplate the problem of incompatibility between Ceftriaxone and Vancomycin. Also, the contention on Section 3(d) was dismissed on the ground that nothing in the prior art qualified as a “known substance” and hence Section 3(d) was not attracted.  The Controller declared that that the invention was both a technical advance as well as economically significant and therefore qualified the inventiveness criteria.

We hope that this summarizes the last week's News. Your comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Until next post of weekly News updates.

Anjana Srinivasan, (2nd Year student of IIT Kharagpur Law School)

For 'OFF Court.'

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.

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