Corel Corporation vs. Mahabali Innovative Technologies Private Limited, CS (COMM) 711/2016

A suit was instituted for permanent injunction, against the Defendant to restrain the Defendant from infringing the copyright of the Plaintiff in various software programmes of the Plaintiff including the Corel DVD MovieFactory 7 software and for ancillary reliefs.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a revised prudential framework for resolution of stressed assets on 7 June 2019 (Revised Circular) in supersession of the erstwhile circular on Resolution of Stressed Assets dated 12 February 2018 (Feb 12 Circular) which was struck down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court on 2 April 2019.

The 2005 Report of the Expert Committee on Company Law (JJ Irani Committee Report) had noted that an effective insolvency law:

“should strike a balance between rehabilitation and liquidation. It should provide an opportunity for genuine effort to explore restructuring/ rehabilitation of potentially viable businesses with consensus of stakeholders reasonably arrived at. Where revival / rehabilitation is demonstrated as not being feasible, winding up should be resorted to.

Commercial decisions are largely driven by incentive structures. Therefore, if legal policy favours a particular commercial outcome, the decision-making in that regard must be placed in the hands of entities most likely to be affected by such outcomes. This logic can also be applied to insolvency proceedings. The favoured policy outcome of the Indian insolvency law framework is the maximization of value of a corporate debtor. In the context of an insolvent company, the persons most likely to gain from such maximization of value are its creditors.

The Hon’ble National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (‘NCLAT’) in its order in Standard Chartered Bank v. Satish Kumar Gupta, R.P. of Essar Steel Limited & Ors. has dealt with various important legal issues in relation to the corporate insolvency resolution process (‘CIRP’). Some of the key aspects of this judgment have been summarised below:

1. Validity of Guarantee

I. NCLAT approves the resolution plan submitted by ArcelorMittal in the resolution proceedings in respect of Essar Steel India Limited while modifying the distribution of money to the financial and the operational creditors

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) has been widely considered a landmark legislation that has brought about a paradigm shift in the recovery and resolution process.

However, during the implementation of the IBC over the past two years and eight months, several challenges have emerged, including:

Revision of ECB framework: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on December 17, 2018 revised and consolidated the provisions related to borrowing and lending transactions into one single regulation i.e. the Foreign Exchange Management (Borrowing and Lending) Regulations, 2018 ("ECB Regulations").       

On 11 February 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed the Civil Appeal bearing No...

Banning of Unregulated Deposits Schemes Ordinance, 2019 By Sudish Sharma and Vishakha Singh

Indian economy in the recent times has witnessed a plethora of fraudulent corporate malpractices. The issue of illegal deposit-taking activities has been a concerning one, causing various financial frauds in forms of 'ponzi' schemes, 'chit funds' scams etc. There has been

a dire need to counter such illicit practices, and to

initiate another deterrent action against the black

money generated out of such illicit-deposit taking