SpicyIP Gets New Leader

I am now thrilled to announce that after much persuasion, Sumathi Chandrasekharan has agreed to lead the blog in my absence.

I’m very positive that this change will be for the better. For one, my style was a little too confrontational and I’ve ruffled a number of proud feathers. Hopefully, under Sumathi’s leadership, SpicyIP will be able to garner more goodwill and well wishers.

I do hope that you can all lend Sumathi the same kind of support that you were kind enough to lend me. If you have any suggestions for improving the blog, please let Sumathi know.

We’re planning on increasing our trademark focus on the blog. So if any of you trademark specialists out there are interested in joining the blog, would you please let me or Sumathi know? We’re also planning on running a “Romanticising Innovation” Series. Sumathi will bring you more details on this soon.

Notwithstanding the sabbatical, I will continue to remain involved with SpicyIP in an advisory/mentor capacity.

I will also try and focus on increasing the number of offerings under our “IP Resources” section on the SpicyIP website. I’m happy to announce in this regard that we’ve uploaded all the presentations made during the recently concluded conference on the Indian “Bayh Dole” conference at NUJS. For those interested in the photos during this event (the lighting played spoil sport), see here. CH Unni, a leading IP reporter with the Mint, carried a great article encapsulating the views of many of our conference speakers. This was followed up soon thereafter by a hard hitting editorial in the Mint.

I’m also happy to announce that the Ayyangar report is finally downloadable–though it will call for considerable patience from your end. As you can appreciate, unless we have more IP information in the public domain, our debates will continue to suffer.

Lastly, I will continue to post on issues that I care about, though the postings will not be as frequent as my frenzied postings of yesteryears.