In an earlier post, I expressed my desire to step down from the leadership of SpicyIP. This decision (over which I procrastinated for several months) stemmed from a variety of reasons, the most significant of which was my extensive involvement with a whole host of projects around legal education (most pertinently, an access to education project for underprivileged students, titled IDIA).
I therefore thought it better to hand over leadership to someone with more bandwidth to handle the onerous task of managing a blog that had set out very ambitious goals for itself and more importantly, boasted a very demanding readership. Also, it was important that the blog receive a fresh infusion of ideas from a new leader.
I am very pleased to announce that both Rajiv Kumar Choudhry and Swaraj Paul Barooah have agreed to undertake this onerous responsibility and will be leading the blog (as joint Editors in Chief) from now on. The earlier leadership team (comprising me, Sumathi and Prashant) will take a backseat. Sumathi expressed her desire to leave the blog altogether, since her current professional engagement has very little to with IP; and she does not expect a significant future engagement with IP. Her departure is a huge loss for the blog, as she played a vital leadership role and was responsible for pointing us to the latest case laws that we often blogged about.
Prashant, our most prolific blogger by far, will leave soon for his LLM to Stanford law school. After much persuasion, he’s agreed to post from time to time, despite the pressures of an LLM and a new country and culture.
As for me, I will continue to post on topics close to my heart. I will also continue in my role as chief mentor to the blog.
I want to take this opportunity to thank many of you who wrote to me in response to my earlier post. Your encouraging words and support mean a lot to all of us here and I hope all of you will join me in welcoming Rajiv and Swaraj to the leadership of this blog. They are very committed to the goals of this blog and have already been instrumental in shaping the future of the blog in significant ways. Rajiv has helped throw more light on patent office decisions and comes with an excellent background in patent law and practice, both in India and the US. Swaraj brings in a keen academic (and dare I say philosophical bent) and has been instrumental in filling a huge void of the blog, namely tracking international developments around IP.
We couldn’t have found a better team to lead the show. I hope you will offer them the same level of support that you offered me. And that you will continue to engage with the blog at a constructive level and help us improve. We are also hoping that many more of you will come forward with guest posts from time to time. We really need a strong infusion of guest posts, particularly from practitioners. So if you have any smart legal opinions that you’ve rendered to clients and cashed your checks, we’d encourage you to share those opinions with the wider community of readers. Our blog philosophy on sharing which I hope you will also endorse (through your conduct) owes much to the inimitable GB Shaw: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
Prashant, Shamnad has written that you might be leaving soon. It is good that you have agreed to continue your contributions to spicyip. I agree with Shamnad that you are most prolific blogger. We will definitely be missing the spice as you have been digging out various facts and statistics through RTIs.
Sumathi has also been digging out facts and statistics through RTIs. It wil also be a loss to spicyip readers of her leaving the blogspot.