Bombay High Court sides with 30-year-old restaurant over “Barbecue” vs. “Barbeque” cloud kitchen
On September 1, 2026, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court restrained a cloud kitchen operating as “Barbeque, Gokulpeth” from using the name “Barbecue” or “Barbeque” in any form, overturning a district court’s refusal to grant interim relief. Justice Y.G. Khobragade allowed an appeal by Tarvinder Singh Jhans, whose restaurant has operated under “Barbecue/Barbeque” in Sadar, Nagpur, since 1994 and holds registered trademark and copyright protection over the name and logo.
The dispute began in November 2022, when the Sadar restaurant discovered a Gokulpeth-based outlet selling food under a similar name through Zomato and Swiggy. The district court had denied interim protection partly because the two businesses operated from different parts of Nagpur. The High Court rejected that reasoning, holding that “Barbeque” and “Barbecue” are phonetically identical, potentially triggering infringement under Section 29 of the Trade Marks Act regardless of the two outlets’ physical distance from each other, particularly given both were now competing for the same customers on shared delivery platforms.
Copyright Office rules AI-generated art can be copyrighted, but an AI system cannot be its author
In an order dated August 31, 2026, India’s Registrar of Copyrights, Prof. (Dr.) Unnat P. Pandit, rejected an application seeking to register an AI system called DABUS as the author of an artwork titled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” while simultaneously holding that the artwork itself satisfied the originality requirement under Section 13 of the Copyright Act.
The application, filed by American computer scientist Stephen L. Thaler, named DABUS as author and Thaler as owner. The Registrar, assisted by an amicus curiae over three hearings, held that DABUS has no statutory recognition or legal personality under Indian law and cannot be an “author” under Section 2(d)(vi), which attributes authorship of computer-generated work to “the person who causes the work to be created.” Thaler was repeatedly offered the chance to amend the application to name himself as author but declined. The ruling leaves open whether a properly filed application, naming a human as author, could succeed on similar AI-assisted work.
India’s Patent Office proposes major update to pharmaceutical and biotech patent examination guidelines
On September 4, 2026, the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) released two new sets of draft guidelines for examining patent applications in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, the first substantial revision since 2014 and 2013 respectively. Stakeholders have until September 19, 2026, to submit comments.
The revised pharmaceutical guidelines incorporate more than a decade of case law developed since the originals were published, expand guidance on Markush claims (a common way of claiming a class of related chemical compounds in a single patent), and reiterate the therapeutic efficacy standard under Section 3(d), the provision India has used to limit patents on minor modifications of existing drugs. The biotech guidelines similarly account for technologies that barely existed in 2013, including CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and modern bioinformatics tools, alongside updated biodiversity compliance requirements.
Delhi High Court refers question of online jurisdiction in IP suits to a larger bench
On August 25, 2026, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani of the Delhi High Court declined to independently resolve a jurisdictional dispute between Hindustan Unilever Limited and Kwick Living (I) Private Limited, instead referring three unsettled questions to a larger bench, in a case testing whether a company can sue anywhere in India simply because a disputed advertisement is accessible online.
HUL had sued Kwick Living, the company behind home-care brand Beco, in Delhi over a comparative ad campaign targeting HUL’s Vim and Surf Excel products, despite both companies being headquartered in Mumbai. Kwick Living challenged Delhi’s jurisdiction outright. The Court observed that “the internet cannot become a basis” for claiming jurisdiction anywhere in the country, warning that unchecked online accessibility could “throw the very concept of territorial jurisdiction… to the winds,” and referred the underlying legal conflict, arising from inconsistent past Delhi High Court rulings, for authoritative resolution.
