In the fashion industry, counterfeiting has been present for a long time, be it due to consumer preference or lack of job opportunities, forcing people to commit illegal acts like these. The internet revolution has also acted as fuel for the ever-so-booming counterfeiting market. Fashion brands spend an enormous amount of money on promoting their items. However, when these items become popular, businesses with ill intentions try to imitate them to encash the goodwill and reputation established by the reputed brands. As society develops, fashion brand owners desire to protect their products in all possible ways. This paper shall discuss how Indian trademark law protects fashion brand owners, how the offence of counterfeiting in the fashion industry is expanding in physical and online markets, and the threat of its outspread in the future on emerging platforms like Metaverse. The author shall try to provide potential solutions to curb counterfeiting in the Indian fashion industry.

Inventive step is the sine qua non for the grant of a patent. Arguably, this subjective evaluation of the claimed inventionensures a sufficient leap forward to the existing technology. The footnote appended to Article 27 of the TRIPS Agreementcontemplates that inventive step may be deemed tobe synonymous with"non-obvious". Thus, the footnote has left it openendedfor the WTO members to speculate on may or may not situations or entirely rule out this apparent inventive step/nonobviousnessequivalence suggestion. TRIPS Agreement does not define inventive step or lay down the standards to befollowed in construing the person from whose perspective the claimed invention has to be looked into for inventivestep/non-obviousness determination. In the U.S., Congress and the Courts have consistently interpreted "non-obviousness"as technical advancement to the concerned discipline. When it comes to Indian law, there is an apparentclarity, but whendelved deep, the outcome lacks crucial elements of predictability. Section 2(1)(ja) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970 is framedin such a way so that it gives an impression to the reader that technical advancement and being non-obvious to a personskilled in the art are two distinct concepts. The US Courts always gave economic considerations a secondary status in thedetermination of the non-obviousness of a given invention. Indian patent statute specifically mentions economicsignificanceand places it as an alternative to technical advancementwithoutclarifying the interconnection of the twoconnotations.The authors intend to understand, in what way technical advance can be considered as a completely separatestandalone criterion for patentability in conjunction with non-obviousness. Furthermore, as a step forward, the authors wantto expound on whether economic consideration alone,without even requiring non-obviousness, can fulfil the inventive stepcriterion in India.

Armed conflict is inevitable most of the time between two high-contracting parties. The world has seen two world wars that killed millions of humans and injured many more. Armed conflict in the last few decades has seen a surge of new means and methods of warfare. Various nations are investing money in developing their war preparedness and devising new ways of combating it. It is not uncommon for countries to take advantage of armed conflicts to gain an advantage in various areas, including intellectual property (IP) rights. The world had never imagined that intellectual property rights could be used as an economic weapon during the war and as a countermeasure to economic sanctions and other soft law mechanisms for the implementation of international law. Intellectual property piracy has become a new method of economic sanctions, and many high-contracting parties to the armed conflict are using it during war or will use it in future armed conflicts. The present paper will discuss three major dimensions of IPR and armed conflicts, ie., (i) the role of intellectual property rights during armed conflict; (ii) how countries can use intellectual property rights to impose economic sanctions; and (iii) how intellectual property rights can be used as countermeasures to economic sanctions imposed on any state by other states.

India has a specific legislation for the scheme of industrial designs which mandates statutory registration as a prerequisite to obtain IP rights in designs. Industries characterised by products having short lifecycle, release colossal number of new designs in the market in short intervals of time. Due to the dynamism of these sectors, registering all the industrial designs, is not practically and commercially feasible. As the present design regime in India, governed by the Designs Act, 2000, only protects the registered designs, it leaves the unregistered ones open to rampant copying and piracy. The European Union and the United Kingdom are two jurisdictions which offer advanced protection to the unregistered designs, which has proved to provide a competitive edge to their industries, by incentivising their design innovation. Against this background, the article seeks to critically analyse the Designs Act, 2000 to locate loopholes under it, in extending protection to the unregistered designs, undertake a comparative analysis of the unregistered design protection in European Union and United Kingdom, and propose suggestions for introduction of unregistered design rights in India. Further, rapid design piracy caused by 3-D printing, mass production techniques and advanced technologies, supports the urgent need to extend an argument for protection of unregistered designs under the Indian Design regime.

In this decade, five new series on different themes of intellectual property rights (hereinafter, IPRs) were started by JIPR which include ‗IP & Taxation Policy', ‗Theoretical Underpinnings of IP Laws', ‗Standard Essential Patents', ‗IP Laws Declared by the Supreme Court', and ‗JIPR in IPR Research'. In this decade, a total of 139 articles were published covering different areas of IPRs. The articles published in this decade constitute 14.52 (point five two) percent of the total articles published in JIPR till Volume 28 (5) (2023). In terms of percentage of the articles published in each decade, this decade with 14.52 (point five two) percent comes fourth after the decades

The Parliament of India makes, amends, and unmakes law. The Supreme Court of India (hereinafter, the Supreme Court), under Article 141 of the Constitution of India, declares the law and makes and unmakes the law while deciding cases through the process of judicial review and interpretation-construction. The constitutional powers of these two branches are related but separate. The law made by the Parliament stands constitutionally valid unless declared uconstitutional, eviscerated or read down by the Supreme Court. As the analyses reveals, 1 theconstitutionality of none of the seven intellectual property (hereinafter, IP) enactments has been challenged before the Supreme Court in any of the cases brought before it. Had the constitutionality of these statutes been challenged even then the statutes are presumed to be constitutionally valid and the person who challenges the validity of the statute and any provision thereof has a heavy burden to discharge. The Supreme Court ordinarily interprets-constructs the provisions of the statute and applies the same to decide the question(s) of lawand/or question of facts in a lis between the parties before it. The answer of the Supreme Court becomes bindingnot only in personam but also in rem for the future cases. Among all the IP cases decided by the Supreme Court, trademark law may be called as the King of IP decisions with maximum number of reported decisions followed by copyright, patent and design laws. The first trademark case was decided by the Supreme Court in the year 1953, after 1196 days (3.27 years) of its establishment. In 20 th century, the Supreme Court has decided a total of 19 cases on trademark law. On an average, the Supreme Court has decided .38 (point three eight) trademark case in a year; orone trademark case in 978.94 (point nine four) days or in 2.68 (point six eight) years. A review of reported decisions of 20 th centuryreveals thatthe Court has: (i) declared Trademark Law in 15 decisions; (ii) not only interpreted the provisions of the statutes but has also constructed them; (iii) not declared anything on the constitutionality of the trademark statutes as no such question of constitutionality was involved; (iv) delivered all the decisions unanimously as no dissenting or concurring judgment is reported; (v) decided maximum number of cases by Full Bench (11) and remaining 8 decisions by Division Bench. It is also observed that two Chief Justices of India and one Acting Chief Justice were on the Bench in three decisions, but the judgment was authored only by the Acting Chief Justice. Paper proceeds with the same argument and method as developed and adopted in the first three papers covering patent law, copyright law and design law published under the theme "IP Laws Declared by the Supreme Court". This Paper seeks to cull out the principles of trademark law as declared by the Supreme Court in 20 th century decisions.

As technological developments continue to disrupt creative industries, they put to test our copyright doctrine. The recent litigation initiated against Sci-Hub and LibGen by three publishers raises complex questions permeating the Indian copyright regime. In this context, it is important to determine the values our copyright system serves and the standards of ‘fairness’ it demands to exempt certain infringements. This paper studies the Indian fair dealing jurisprudence from a theoretical standpoint to argue that it lacks a robust normative foundation. It first maps the prevalent theories of copyright and suggests that the cultural theory not only exposes gaps in the dominant incentive theory but also offers a more comprehensive understanding of copyright. It then analyses Indian fair dealing cases from this viewpoint. While the jurisprudence is largely inconsistent, analysis of two important cases reveals that while their outcome was desirable from a cultural theory perspective, their doctrine is insufficient to excuse certain socially-valuable infringements. Their emphasis on transformativeness coupled with an implicit bar on verbatim reproductions is critical. It is suggested that the Indian fair dealing jurisprudence is unfit to foster a just and attractive culture; one that strives to attain pluralistic values essential for the ‘good life’.

This is the fifth paper on the theme ‗JIPR in IPR Research' and proceeds with the same method and arguments as adopted and developed in the previous four papers published on the theme. In this decade, a total of 144 articles were published including one Special Issue on the theme ‗New Technologies, Climate Change and IPR'. These 144 articles were published in 30 issues of 5 volumes. JIPR in this decade published 6 regular issues in Volumes 20 (2015) and 22 (2017). Whereas, the Issues 4 and 5 of Volume 21 (2016); Issues 2 and 3, and 4 and 5 of Volume 23 (2018); and Issues ( 1) and ( 2), ( 3) and (4), and ( 5) and ( 6) of Volume 24 (2019) were published jointly. Out of total articles published in JIPR till Volume 24, the number of articles published in this decade (144) constitutes 17.60 (point six zero) percent, and the contribution of this decade (2015-2019) is 19.27 (point two seven) percent.

Lately, there have been several multi-jurisdiction litigations involving SEPs. In large part this is because of the complexity of executing FRAND licenses for SEP portfolios. This work focuses on, and explains, some of the issues that arise in the context of FRAND licensing-including, the problem of over-declaration by SEP holders, the possibility of patent hold-out, difficulties associated in court determination of terms of a global FRAND license for SEP portfolios, lack of awareness regarding the nuances of SEP/FRAND space, and the intrinsic informational imbalances that exist in any FRAND negotiation. The issues discussed here are by no means exhaustive and many of them do not have easy answers.