In an interesting turn of events, both, MIP & Legally India have reported that, Delhi Based IP firm, Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan, have poached two key partners from IP giant – Remfry and Sagar. The two partners are Mr. Sanjay Kumar, Head of Patents at Remfry & Sagar for over 13 years & Ms. Arpita Sawhney, Litigation Partner at Remfry & Sagar for over 5 years. Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan is a combined Tax & IP firm which is currently involved in several high stakes patent disputes before the Delhi High Court such as the Jet/Virgin patent suit as also the Enercon litigation.
This new alliance is indeed an interesting turn of events since such Senior Partners tend to leave the firm with several of their clients and in the case of Remfry and Sagar that could be a substantial number. Normally we would not blog about such inter-firm migrations, however this is a special case since it impacts the Novartis appeal against the rejection of its patent for Glivec which is currently pending before the Supreme Court of India.
Mr. Sanjay Kumar has been advising Novartis right throughout its Glivec Saga, starting with the pre-grant opposition hearing against the Glivec patent before the Patent Office at Madras on the 14th of October, 2005 to the IPAB and consequently the appeal to the Supreme Court of India where the matter is pending final arguments. Ms. Arpita Sawhney as litigation partner has obviously been involved in the matter throughout, although it is not possible to confirm whether she was involved during the pre-grant opposition before the Patent Office.
Now Mr. Lakshmi Kumaran, of Lakshmi Kumaran and Sreedharan, has also been involved in the Novartis case, right from the start but against Novartis as counsel for Ranbaxy. Mr. Kumaran has appeared for Ranbaxy right from the initial EMR skirmishes against Novartis before the Madras High Court in 2004, to the pre-grant opposition against the Glivec patent in 2005, to the writ petitions before the Madras High Court challenging the constitutionality of Section 3(d) in 2007, to the appeal before the IPAB against the Glivec order in 2008. Mr. Kumaran’s strength lies in the fact that he has argued all these case by himself without engaging senior counsel and from what I hear he’s done an excellent job of it. Surprisingly Mr. Kumaran’s name does not appear on any of the Supreme Court orders pertaining to the appeal filed by Novartis against the IPAB order in 2009, atleast the Order that I had access to.
It would appear extremely strange for Mr. Kumar and Ms. Sawhney to join an opposing law firm especially when the case in question is the Novartis case, which as you all know is ripe for arguments. However it must also be pointed out that there is something strange happening in the Novartis case itself. As we reported last time, both Ranbaxy & NATCO has not filed their reply to the appeal filed by Novartis before the Supreme Court despite being given seven months for the same. NATCO not filing a reply is understandable since it has filed a counter-appeal. However Ranbaxy not filing a reply is mighty suspicious. Add to that, the fact that the very first Supreme Court Order, wherein Justice Katju recused himself from the case, does not record Mr. Kumaran’s name and I am tempted to speculate that Ranbaxy is not keen on contesting the appeal filed by Novartis. This would not be the least bit surprising since Ranbaxy was bought out by Daiichi a Japanese based innovator company. In addition Ranbaxy was also the only Indian company to have supported patents for incremental innovations during its submissions to the Technical Expert Group on Patent Law.
The million dollar question (literally) now is whether Novartis is going to stick with Remfry and Sagar or move along with Mr. Kumar & Ms. Sawhney to Lakshmi Kumaran and Sridharan. Changing counsels at this point must be one nightmare of a decision for Novartis. It would appear that, on the facts available to me, there still may exist a conflict of interest for Mr. Kumaran to advise Novartis since apart from Ranbaxy, which no longer seems interested in this dispute, he also represented Hetero Drugs Ltd at the IPAB, which I suspect is still a part of the current litigation.
Another interesting fact about Mr. Kumar and Ms. Sawhney is that they were also representing Bayer in litigation against Cipla before the Supreme Court and the High Court. The litigation before the Supreme Court pertains to the disastrous ‘patent-linkage’ request made by Bayer and which was dismissed with heavy costs by the Delhi High Court. We’ve blogged about it here. The second case pertains to Bayer’s patent infringement suit against Cipla over its Nexavar patent. This suit goes to trial later this year. The question therefore is whether Bayer will be sticking with Remfry & Sagar or moving on with Mr. Kumar and Ms. Sawhney to the new firm.
Normally innovator pharmaceutical companies distributed their patent work amongst the three biggies – Anand & Anand, Remfry & Sagar and DePenning & DePenning. It remains to be seen whether this new alliance will be able to carve out a space for itself in the sphere of pharmaceutical patents. It is likely that in this new alliance we will witness the rise of a mighty potent patent law firm, especially given the years of patent experience behind Mr. Kumaran, Mr. Kumar and Ms. Sawhney.
Totally 7 well experienced left. But, only two prominent fellows have been disclosed by you.
By the way if Sanjay & his team has joined Lakshmi kumaran’s team, should they not recuse themselves from the matter? They are now in effect the plaintiff and the defendant in the matter! Same with enercon case.
another point. Even Novartis has not filed their reply to the SLP filed by Natco. They have not even filed rejoinder to the replies filed by the other respondents. Is this a mere acadamic petition.
Hey Ms. Sawhney became a partner only this April! Not since 2005…
By the way it seems some senior partner at K&S has also migrated. It is really the season for migrations!
Really……which partner….which firm?
News is Rajeshwari has moved from KnS to S Majumdar.
And Remfry witnessed the exit of two Consultants too, both from Patents. Both were highly experienced in their own domains and quite senior. Indeed, its migration time!!
Grapevine has is that Ms. Rajeshwari is going independent….She has considerable clout in the Patent domain to be able to attract good clients..
Who were these Senior Consultants from Remfry? Any idea?
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Migrations in IP are far lesser than those in Corporate Law.
The Consultants are Dr. Deepa Tiku and Ms. Richa Pandey.. The Seniors are Mr. Durga Das Bhatla and Mr. Kunal Bhatia..
Sanjay Kumar and Arpita Sawhney left Lakshmi Kumaran!!!
Buzz is that in less than 11 months and after attending all IP events and conferences on behalf of the firm, Mr. Sanjay Kumar and Ms. Arpita Sawhney (whose joining was celebrated by the Firm) left Lakshmi Kumaran.
Why has the news not reached IP fraternity???