Trap Purchases and Manufactured Jurisdiction in Indian IP Litigation A study of SML Ltd. v. M/s Happy Agro Chemicals and the doctrine of trap transactions Introduction In intellectual property disputes, few procedural issues matter as much as deciding where a case can be filed. The choice of court often shapes the entire journey of the case — from how quickly interim orders are granted, to the attitude of the local lawyers, to the practical burden placed on a defendant who must fight far from home. Because the forum is so important, plaintiffs sometimes try to influence it. The most common method is the trap purchase : a test buy arranged by the plaintiff, where an investigator pretends to be a regular customer, purchases the allegedly infringing product, and keeps the invoice and packaging. Later, this evidence is used not only to show infringement but — more controversially — to argue that the cause of action arose within the territory of the chosen court. Tra...
Background Ericsson initiated patent infringement proceedings against Micromax Informatics Ltd. and Mercury Electronics Ltd., alleging infringement of patents relating to speech codec technology — the combined use of a speech coder and speech decoder to compress a caller's voice signal, transmit it as coded speech frames over a radio link, and decode it at the receiving end. A notable feature of this technology is discontinuous transmission: during periods when the speaker is inactive, no coded speech frames are sent; instead, the transmitter periodically sends speech parameters sufficient for the decoder to generate "comfort noise" in place of silence. According to Ericsson's own patent specifications, speech coders and decoders are conventionally built into radio transmitters and receivers respectively, working together to enable voice communication over a radio link. A mobile phone, in this framing, is simply a conventional radio communication device — a radi...