Dr Vivekanandan appointed as New Dean at IIT Kharagpur Law School

Dr VC Vivekandandan, a leading IP academic from India was recently appointed as the Dean of the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSOIPL), IIT Kharagpur. RGSOIPL was established in the year 2006 by IIT Kharapur in collaboration with the George Washington University Law School, Washington DC.

RGSOIPL is the brainchild of Mr. Vinod Gupta, CEO of InfoUSA and Life Fellow of IIT Kharagpur, who proposed its setting up and also promised a substantial grant to that end. Microsoft has set up a centre of excellence in RGSOIPL given its strategic location within some of the best research labs in the world.

This school, which showed great promise at the start had not really taken off owing to a variety of factors, including the fact that it was never really headed by a lawyer or someone with IP expertise. In fact, this and other factors caused it to be at the receiving end of notices from the Bar Council of India, the supervisory body for legal education in India.

More recently, we blogged on the fact that the specialised nature of this law school (with its strong focus on IPRs and its restriction of admissions to only those with a science background) was challenged in a writ petition before the Supreme Court of India.

Vivek’s appointment augurs well for the law school: with his proven track record for running exceptionally successful IP programmes out of NALSAR, a premier law school based in Hyderabad, one can expect him to take RGSOIPL to altogether new heights. We wish him the very best of luck.

A little more about Vivek’s background:

Dr Vivekanandan received his PhD on ‘Impact of TRIPS on IP legal regime in India from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He has a Master’s Degree in Corporate Law and Securities. He also holds a Master’s Degree and M.Phil. degree in Public Administration from Madras University. From 2001-2009, he was working in NALSAR Hyderabad and had held various posts including Associate Professor, Professor, MHRD Chair Professor on IP Law etc. In 2001 at NALSAR he set up and headed the distance education division named NALSAR Proximate which has become very successful in offering PG Diplomas in Patents Law and Cyber Laws for the professionals from the field of pharma, biotechnology and software.

He is a visiting faculty for programs at State University of New York- Buffalo, Indian School of Business-Hyderabad, Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, National Police Academy, Hyderabad, National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur, National Law School of India, Bangalore, MCRHRD Institute, Hyderabad, National Academy of Agricultural Research and Management, Hyderabad, Agricultural University, Hyderabad National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad, PEXA, Mumbai. He is an expert invitee to the Hague Conference on Private International Law on ‘Online Jurisdiction issues on Legal information’ in October 2008.

He served as the expert member of the EDGE Foundation of University of Ottawa in drafting the ‘WIPO Development Agenda’ report tabled at the WIPO General Assembly. He is a member of the ‘Special Interest Group’ of the Association of Biotech led Enterprises (ABLE) Bangalore. He is also a consultant for the ISTE-ASTE programme for IPR, IPR programs for DSIR, member of Bioethics committee of the APIDC Venture capital fund. He has authored many articles and chapters in international and national publications. In October 2008 he was elected as a member of the prestigious At-Large Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).