Plant variety protection in India; New variety of Blackberry under threat

Ever enthusiastic and diligent in her pursuit of intellectual property issues, the IPKat's friend Elizabeth Verkey has broken new ground with her book, Law of Plant Varieties Protection, which was published earlier this year by the Eastern Book Company (you can get all the details and buy it online from the publisher here). This book comes with a Foreword from the Honourable Mr Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Chief Justice of India, who writes:

"In India plant variety protection law is one of the nascent branches of intellectual property that has several facets. Being a legislation in its infancy the Courts in India did not have an occasion to interpret the provisions and so Indian case laws are different in this area of law. The attempt (in this book) at tracing the case laws in other jurisdictions will prove useful to the legal fraternity and student community.

This work has been written during a period in which there are considerable developments in the field of plant variety protection and at a time when there is a great dearth of books on the subject. The author has made successful attempts to examine the founding Treaties, Conventions and Legislations that have resulted in the presented harmonization effected by the TRIPS Agreement.

This book on ''Law of Plant Varieties Protection'' by Dr Elizabeth Verkey is an enabling instrument to tackle the great depths of plant variety protection laws and will be a guiding light to legal practitioners, academicians, plant breeders and scientists, and not to forget, the students of the subject".

Adds the IPKat: the first 120 pages or thereabout explain what the subject is all about, why it's important, why and how plant variety protection differs from patent protection, and how plant protection works under the well-documented systems of the European Union and the United States.

Left: Arogyapaacha - source of the Jeevani wonder-drug. Public property, private monopoly or traditional resource?

Then Elizabeth gets to work on the law in India. She does not avoid delicate topics such as traditional knowledge, terminator genes and farmers' rights -- issues on which feelings run high. The book then concludes with the international framework which, if the IPKat had been writing the book, he would probably have stuck at the beginning, after the introductory materials. But then, the juiciest bits aren't in the international provisions ...

Bibliographic details: date of publication 2007. Price : Rs. 450 (Rs. 405 if you buy it online). ISBN 978-81-7012-962-1. xv + 367 pages. Rupture factor: small.


From Bloomberg, via the ever-helpful Birgit Clark, comes a news item about Research In Motion Ltd, the maker of BlackBerry email phones, suing LG Electronics following an allegation that its Black Label mobile phones infringe the BlackBerry trade mark. According to RIM, LG's phones are sold under a name that is "confusingly similar". RIM seeks a court order barring LG from using the Black Label name and unspecified damages. If you want to follow the progress of this action, it's Research In Motion v LG Electronics, 07-7323, US District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).

The IPKat didn't think for a moment that there was any serious similarity, confusing or otherwise, between the names BlackBerry and Black Label. But he wondered how the owners of various BLACK LABEL trade mark feel about what are arguably quite well-known marks being bandied around in this manner.

Merpel's dreaming of convergence and a really exciting product - when Apple and BlackBerry combine here