Mumbai University Solved Question Papers
Intellectual Property and International Organisations and Agreements
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology
2024-25 Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
First published on munotes.in on 14 September 2026.
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Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2024-25 examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at September 2026, and six changes date most textbooks on this subject. The WTO's Appellate Body has been unable to hear appeals since 11 December 2019, so an appeal can be decided only where both parties have agreed to appeal arbitration, as members of the interim arrangement of 2020 have, and India has not joined it. The moratorium on non-violation complaints under TRIPS lapsed at the end of March 2026. Least developed countries need not apply most of TRIPS until 1 July 2034. WIPO administers twenty-eight treaties after two new treaties of 2024, and India joined the Strasbourg Agreement with effect from 7 July 2026. The Intellectual Property Appellate Board was abolished with effect from 4 April 2021. And the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Acts of 2023 and 2026 omitted sections 68 and 67 of the Copyright Act respectively.
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2024-25 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2024-25 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
Instructions printed on the paper
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Answer
For full marks, cover: the proposition has two halves and both must be explained. First, that intellectual property is an ASSET: it is owned, valued, bought, sold, licensed and borrowed against, and it now forms most of the value of leading firms. Second, that it BOOSTS DEVELOPMENT: show the channels (incentive to innovate, technology transfer and investment, licensing and franchising income, finance, geographical indications and rural incomes, the creative economy) with Indian illustrations and cases, Gujarat Bottling v. Coca Cola, Ericsson v. Lava, Engineering Analysis Centre v. CIT and Scotch Whisky Association v. Pravara Sahakar Karkhana. An LLM answer must then test the proposition: the historical and development critique, and India's own pharmaceutical experience.
For most of economic history wealth meant land, buildings, machinery and stocks of goods. In a modern economy the most valuable resources are increasingly INTANGIBLE: technologies, software, brands, designs, data and creative works. A company's balance sheet may show a modest factory, while its market value rests on patents, trademarks and know-how. Widely cited market studies estimate that intangible assets now account for the great majority of the market value of the largest listed American companies, a reversal of the position in the 1970s.
Intangibles have a peculiar economic character. They are NON-RIVAL, because one person's use of an idea does not reduce another's, and they are hard to exclude people from, because a formula or a song can be copied at almost no cost once it exists. Left to the market, such goods tend to be under-produced, since the creator cannot capture the return. Intellectual property law responds by creating EXCLUSIVITY where nature does not provide it, and in doing so it converts an idea into an ASSET that can be owned and traded.
It is property recognised by statute. Section 68 of the Patents Act, 1970 treats a patent as capable of assignment, mortgage and licence; section 18 of the Copyright Act, 1957 lets copyright be assigned wholly or partially; and section 37 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 empowers the registered proprietor to assign a mark. Each right is exclusive, transferable and enforceable against the world, which are the marks of property.
It is valued and accounted for. Accounting standards recognise acquired intangible assets, and in mergers the price paid for brands and patents often exceeds the value of plant and machinery. A pharmaceutical company's value rises or falls on the grant or revocation of a single patent.
It earns income without being consumed. A licence of the same patent or mark can be granted to many licensees in many countries at once, so a single asset produces multiple streams of royalty.
It can secure finance. Intellectual property can be pledged as collateral and its future royalties securitised. The best-known early example is the 1997 issue of bonds backed by the future royalties of the musician David Bowie's recorded catalogue, and lenders in several countries now lend against patent portfolios.
Channel one: the incentive to innovate and to disclose. Research is costly and uncertain. By allowing an innovator to recover the investment during a period of exclusivity, patents encourage research that would otherwise not be undertaken, and by requiring disclosure they add to the stock of public technical knowledge. WIPO's Global Innovation Index, in which India rose to 38th of 139 economies in 2025, treats intellectual property filings as one measure of an economy's innovative capacity.
Channel two: licensing, standards and royalty income. A firm that owns technology can earn from it without manufacturing everything itself. Standard essential patents in mobile telephony illustrate the scale. In Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Lava International Ltd., decided by the Delhi High Court on 28 March 2024, Ericsson sued an Indian phone maker for using eight patents essential to 2G, EDGE and 3G standards without a licence. The court fixed a FRAND royalty of 1.05 per cent of the net selling price of the phones and awarded damages of about Rs 244 crore. The judgment shows that patented technology is a revenue-producing asset whose value the courts will quantify, and that Indian manufacturers must price that asset into their products.
Channel three: franchising and brand licensing. A trademark lets a business expand through others' investment. Bottlers, restaurants and retailers operate under a brand owner's mark and pay for the goodwill it carries. Gujarat Bottling Co. Ltd. v. Coca Cola Co., (1995) 5 SCC 545, arose when Coca-Cola, having acquired the THUMS UP and LIMCA brands, licensed Gujarat Bottling to bottle and sell its drinks under an agreement containing a NEGATIVE COVENANT not to handle competing brands while the agreement lasted. After the bottler's controlling shares passed to interests aligned with a rival, it began to move towards the competitor. The Supreme Court held that a negative covenant operative during the term of a commercial agreement is NOT a restraint of trade under section 27 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, and upheld an injunction enforcing it. The case shows how the value of a brand is protected in the contracts through which it is exploited.
Channel four: technology transfer and foreign investment. Investors are more willing to establish manufacturing and research facilities, and to license their best technology, where their intellectual property is secure. India's movement to TRIPS-compliant laws coincided with the growth of research and development centres by multinational firms and with collaborations in pharmaceuticals, automobiles and electronics. Cross-border flows of intellectual property payments now form a significant part of trade in services.
The legal characterisation of those payments matters to the economics. In Engineering Analysis Centre of Excellence Pvt. Ltd. v. Commissioner of Income Tax, (2021) 432 ITR 471 (SC), Indian distributors and end users paid foreign suppliers for computer software, and the revenue sought to tax the payments as ROYALTY for the use of copyright. The Supreme Court held that an end-user licence granting only a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use a copy conveys none of the exclusive rights in section 14 of the Copyright Act, so the payments were for the purchase of copyrighted articles and not royalty under the tax treaties. By drawing the line between a licence of intellectual property and a sale of a product, the Court affected the cost of importing technology into India.
Channel five: geographical indications and rural prosperity. A geographical indication turns a region's collective reputation into a premium that producers can capture. Darjeeling tea, Pochampally ikat, Kolhapuri chappals and Basmati rice command higher prices because consumers trust their origin. The economic value of that reputation was defended long before India's GI statute in Scotch Whisky Association v. Pravara Sahakar Karkhana Ltd., AIR 1992 Bom 294, decided on 18 July 1991, where an Indian distiller marketed its whisky in a manner suggesting it was Scotch whisky. The Bombay High Court granted relief for PASSING OFF, holding that the goodwill attached to Scotch whisky belonged to its producers and could not be appropriated by suggestion. Protection of such indications keeps the premium with the region that earned it.
Channel six: the creative economy and small enterprises. Copyright underpins film, music, publishing, gaming and software, sectors in which India is a global exporter and which employ large numbers of young people. Designs and trademarks allow small manufacturers and artisans to distinguish their products and build brands. Where collective management works, royalties from broadcasting and public performance flow back to authors, composers and performers.
| Form of intellectual property | How it becomes an asset | Development effect |
|---|---|---|
| Patents | Licensing, cross-licensing, sale, collateral | Research investment, technology transfer, standards royalties |
| Trademarks | Franchising, brand licensing, valuation in mergers | Enterprise expansion, consumer trust, exports |
| Copyright | Licensing, collective management, securitised royalties | Creative industries, employment, cultural exports |
| Geographical indications | Collective premium, authorised users | Rural incomes, heritage preservation, tourism |
| Designs | Registration, licensing | Manufacturing competitiveness, crafts |
| Trade secrets | Know-how licensing, joint ventures | Industrial capability, especially of small firms |
An LLM answer must not accept the proposition uncritically, because the evidence is mixed and depends on a country's stage of development.
The historical objection. The countries that now demand strong protection industrialised under weak intellectual property regimes. The Netherlands abolished its patent law in 1869 and did not restore it until 1912, and Switzerland had no patent law until 1888. The United States refused to protect foreign authors' copyright for much of the nineteenth century. Development came first and strong protection afterwards.
The development objection. The United Kingdom's Commission on Intellectual Property Rights reported in 2002 that for poor countries with little capacity to innovate, stronger protection raises the cost of knowledge, medicines and seeds without generating much domestic innovation, and that the regime should be tailored to each country's level of development.
India's own experience. The Patents Act, 1970 denied product patents for medicines and allowed only process patents. That weak protection is what allowed Indian firms to reverse-engineer drugs and build a generic pharmaceutical industry that supplies medicines at low cost across the developing world. When TRIPS required product patents, India chose strict patentability standards. In Novartis AG v. Union of India, (2013) 6 SCC 1, the Supreme Court refused a patent for the beta crystalline form of imatinib mesylate, the cancer drug sold as Glivec, because section 3(d) requires a new form of a known substance to show enhanced therapeutic efficacy and none was shown. The case illustrates that the development value of intellectual property depends on calibrating it, not simply strengthening it.
The distributional objection. Most intellectual property is owned by firms in a few countries, so royalty flows run from developing to developed economies. An asset that boosts the owner's economy may drain the user's.
Intellectual property is undoubtedly a valuable asset, and in an economy with a capacity to innovate it becomes a powerful engine of development: it attracts investment, rewards research, supports brands and creative industries and turns local reputation into income. But its developmental value is CONDITIONAL. It depends on institutions that can grant sound rights and enforce them, on the domestic capacity to use the knowledge disclosed, and on using the flexibilities that TRIPS preserves in Articles 7, 8, 30 and 31. India's policy, stated in the National Intellectual Property Rights Policy adopted in May 2016 under the slogan "Creative India; Innovative India", seeks exactly that combination: to use intellectual property as an asset for growth while protecting public health and traditional knowledge.
Conclusion. Intellectual property is a valuable ASSET because the law converts non-rival, copyable ideas into exclusive, transferable property: patents, copyright and trademarks can be assigned, licensed, valued and pledged under sections 68, 18 and 37 of their statutes. It boosts development through the incentive to innovate, royalty income from technology as quantified in Ericsson v. Lava International, franchising protected by the negative covenant upheld in Gujarat Bottling Co. v. Coca Cola Co., cross-border technology flows whose character was settled in Engineering Analysis Centre of Excellence v. CIT, the collective premium of geographical indications defended in Scotch Whisky Association v. Pravara Sahakar Karkhana, and the creative economy. Its developmental effect is, however, conditional on a country's capacity and on calibrated protection, as the history of industrialised nations and India's own use of section 3(d) in Novartis AG v. Union of India demonstrate.
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