P-PIL: Call for Applications

P-PIL (Promoting Public Interest Lawyering) was recently formed to further the cause of public interest through the instrumentality of law in India. It aims to create synergies between law schools, the legal profession and various other stakeholders to leverage their respective talents and resources in order to achieve shared public interest goals.

P-PIL has featured on this blog in the recent past in connection with three IP matters.

1. It began its tryst with public interest law by co-ordinating and helping file a public interest litigation that questioned the constitutional competence of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), a petition that was admitted by the Chennai High court.

2. It then went on to submit representations to the Ministry of HRD asking that the principle of “reciprocity” be respected in relation to sound recordings and that the copyright act be amended to make this clearer. It also asked that section 45 of the copyright act mandating a no objection “trademark” certificate for artistic works be deleted, since it makes no policy sense. And may only contribute to engendering more corrupt practices at India’s trademark office.

3. Most recently, P-PIL conducted an empirical study around educational books and access/availability issues in the context of the debates around parallel imports and section 2(m) of the copyright act. It found that publishers’ assertions that the latest editions of foreign educational titles were available at discounted rates in India to be untrue.

P-PIL is now calling for student applications. If you are a law student and interested in leveraging your legal skills towards the achievement of public interest goals, please let us know. Thus far, we have focussed on IP matters, but will be branching out to other areas of law soon.

If interested working with us as a “research associate”, please mail us at “joinus [at] p-pil.com” including do the following documents:

i) Your updated CV

ii) An essay on “Critically examine the issue of tribunalisation in India and spell out the various measures that you would take to improve tribunals in India, if you were the Law Minister.” [1000 to 1500 words]

iii) Please mail (a) and (b) to “joinus [at] p-pil.com”

iv) Please also fill this form:

Please submit all of the above before 3rd April, 2011.

If you are a legal practitioner, advocate, law firm, NGO or any other interested stakeholder who wishes to partner with us or work with us on matters, please drop us an email at “joinus [at] p-pil.com” indicating the nature of your interest.

For more info on P-PIL, please see our website (still a work in progress)

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