During last week’s Practice Work Shop (PWS) Session, Siddharth Varshney, Associate, lead a discussion on whether we need specialized judges for Intellectual Property (IP ) disputes. The session saw active discussion on the impact of specialized judges on the adjudication of IP related disputes, the current level of technical IP related expertise in the judiciary and administrative efficacy for appointing specialized judges and/or creating special IP benches across Courts in India.

A Special Legal Issues Seminar (SLIS) was conducted by Manavi Jain, Principal & Abhimanyu Kumar, Partner, presenting the firm’s submissions made in response to the ‘Guiding Principles for the Uniform National-Level Regulation of Online Fantasy Sports Platforms in India’ (Draft for Discussion) published by the Niti Aayog in December 2020. The Seminar provided interesting insights into online fantasy sports platforms, the problem areas identified in the draft, proposed guiding principles and ALG’s comments and suggestions (accessible here).

The session concluded with interesting questions from the team on the working and regulation of online fantasy sports, constitution of the proposed self-regulatory body for online fantasy sports and the provisions under various state legislatures on gambling and online gaming.

The presentation can be accessed here.

A ‘Legal Issues Seminar’ (LIS) was conducted by Shreya Das, Associate, on issues relating to IP Taxation, Parody, Trade Secrets and Confidential Information.

The seminar particularly touched upon taxation in case of licensing of IP Rights and whether it is to taxed as capital or revenue expenditure, satire and parody and why the two should not be evaluated at the same parameter in a copyright infringement case, and how to protect confidential information/trade secrets in the absence of any agreements.

The presentation can be accessed here.

During last week’s Practice Work Shop (PWS) Session, Shreya Das, Associate, lead a discussion on the topic “Calculation of damages in IP matters- Do we need a fixed set of guidelines to calculate damages?”. The session saw active discussion on the aspect of types of evidence required for calculation of goodwill and reputation, calculation of damages for loss of goodwill and reputation and whether the practice of awarding double and treble damages should be applied in all IP infringement cases.

This World Autism Awareness Day, we at ALG pledge our support in realizing United Nation’s goal to build a more inclusive and accessible world for all people. Being an equal-opportunity-for-all workplace, we’re constantly listening, learning and unlearning to further our efforts in creating a practical, realistic and enabling work environment for all, including persons on the autism spectrum. Our new “choose where you work from” policy has brought us a step closer to achieving this goal.

We believe conversations are an important yet an underutilized tool in building a more inclusive world for all. Today, we wish to share a show recommendation with you all just to do that – to start a conversation. The show, titled ‘Atypical’, is about Sam – a teenager on the autism spectrum. The show streams on Netflix, and has our heart.

For further reading on World Autism Awareness Day, please visit https://www.un.org/en/observances/autism-day