ALG’s Sheja Ehtesham and Ashwani Balayan will be attending the International Trademark Association (INTA) Leadership Meeting in Miami, Florida from November 15-18.

This invite-only conference for INTA committee members has come to known for insights on cutting-edge legal and business issues, compelling leadership stories, and facilitate face-to-face Business Development sessions.

Sheja Ehtesham is part of the INTA Project Team organising this year’s meeting, which is chaired by Kim Boyle and Rosa Jimenez.

A ‘Legal Issues Seminar- General IP’ (LIS-GIP) was conducted by Sucharitha Banda, Trainee Associate on ‘When can Damages be Awarded in Copyright Infringement Suits?’. The seminar explored the relevant provisions under the Copyright Act, 1957, and delved into the position taken by the courts in respect of the circumstances under which damages can be awarded in copyright infringement suits. The session explored the need for determining a criteria to ascertain damages that may be awarded in copyright infringement suits. The session concluded with a discussion on whether there is a need for a statutory amendment or for guidelines regarding the same, specifically in inadvertent copyright infringement suits.

The presentation can be accessed here.

Intern – Saransh Saxena has commenced his General IP Internship with the firm’s law practice.

We hope his stay in the firm during the 4 week period of his internship will be mutually enriching and that the firm and he will learn exciting things from each other!

General IP Interns – Akshita Goyal (Final Year); Vedant Saxena, Shreeya Kotnis and Udayan Dwivedi (Pre-Final Year) have successfully completed their Internship at ALG. At the end of their internship, they obliged us with their thoughts and ideas during the Sharing of Reflections (SoR) sessions. Their presence enriched the firm while they interned here. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

During last week’s PWS Session, Tarini Sharma, Trainee Associate, led a discussion on the topic “Would allowing monopolization of single colours as trademarks encourage anti-competitiveness?”. The session saw an engaging discussion on providing IP protection to individual colours as trademarks and the impact of such protection on competition in the market. The discussion also explored whether monopolisation of single colours would lead to trademark saturation having adverse effects on competition in the market as well as the colour depletion doctrine. The session concluded with the members sharing their innovative recommendations to maintain a balance between granting protection to single colour marks and fair competition in the market.