Google Under Fire in US for Predatory Monopoly Practices

The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Google-Alphabet (Alphabet is Google’s parent company) for a range of anti-competitive practices using its monopoly power in the search market. This is the only major … Read more

TikTok Ban and Trump’s Extortionist Policies

IN the United States of America, Trump administration has given a 90-day deadline to ByteDance, its Chinese owner, to sell its assets to a US company or shut shop. Microsoft, Oracle and a group including … Read more

US Declares Vaccine War on the World

DONALD Trump launched a new vaccine war this week, but not against the virus. It was against the world. The US and UK were only two hold-outs in the World Health Assembly on the declaration … Read more

Google and IBM Fight on Quantum Supremacy

GOOGLE’S quantum supremacy claim has now been disputed by its close competitor IBM. Not because Google’s Sycamore quantum computer’s calculations are wrong, but because Google had underestimated what IBM’s Summit, the most powerful super computer … Read more

Quantum Computers Brings Uncertainty Knocking at Our Doors

NO, quantum computing did not come of age with Google’s Sycamore, a 54-qubit computer solving a problem in 200 seconds, which would take even a super computer 10,000 years. Instead, it is the first step … Read more

PepsiCo and Monsanto’s Bogus Court Cases is a War on Indian Farmers

THE PepsiCo case against nine potato farmers in Gujarat for violating its Intellectual Property Rights under Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Protection Rights (PPV&FR) has brought out the threat that the US multinationals pose … Read more

Digital Monopoly Platforms, the Modi Regime and the Threat to our Democracy

Prabir Purkayastha ON April 5, 2019, a joint platform of five civil society organisations released an urgent appeal signed by over two hundred eminent persons including two former chief election commissioners – N Gopalaswami and … Read more

Are Software Patents Finally Dead?

Last month, the Indian Patents Office released the revised Guidelines for Computer Related Invention (CRI Guidelines), which has finally aligned the Patents Office fully with the Indian Patents Act. This is the third time that … Read more

CRISPR: Good Science or Evil Science?

A three-year old technology of gene editing called CRISPR is now the focus of two major disputes. The disputes are: who (or which team) will get the Nobel prize for this discovery, and the other, … Read more

Software Patents Refuse to Die

Software patents are like zombies in the zombie film genre that Hollywood has made popular. They just refuse to die. As many time you kill them, they revive again and keep coming back. In India, … Read more

Capitulation on IP: Reaching a Point of No Return?

The government has chosen the occasion of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the US to articulate a vision on Intellectual Property (IP) protection that promises to radically reshape the Indian IP system (as reported in … Read more

Modi’s US Visit: Introducing Bad Patents and Removing Liability for US Suppliers

The US-India Joint Statement signed during Modi’s visit to the US has opened the doors for two Indian laws that have been passed by the Indian Parliament. One is on patents – the Indian Patents … Read more