Last year, we’d announced a new IP writing competition for law students called PIP (Pondering Intellectual Property). This competition was jointly organised by SpicyIP, the MHRD IP Chair at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) and the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Society (IPTLS).
We’d asked law students from around the world to vent their creative musings on the following theme:
“Should the process of creating an invention or work determine its protectability as an intellectual property? “
We received a good number of entries and had a tough time picking the winners. Keeping in mind the rather hectic schedule of our judges, we shortlisted 5 of the top entries and sent it across for their assessment. Without much ado, here are the winners….let the drum rolls begin!
Winners:
1. First place goes to Pervin Rusi Taleyarkhan (3rd year US JD student, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law) for a thought provoking essay titled: “Intellectual Property – Protecting the Intellect or the Property?”
2. Second place goes to Priya Giyarpuram Prasad, (3rd year US JD student, University of Houston Law Center) & Polly Beth Sims (3rd year JD student, SMU Dedman School of Law) for their wonderful essay titled: “Who is Entitled to the Antelope First: a Lioness or a Vulture? – U.S. IP Law’s Implict Recognition of Labor Answers the Lioness.”
3. Third place goes to Karan Talwar & Karthik Khanna (5th year law students, National University of Juridical Sciences (WB NUJS, Kolkata) for their creative take on the theme.
We’ve kept up our side of the bargain and transferred the cash awards that we promised them. They’ve kept their side of the bargain by permitting us to carry their entries open access style on the SpicyIP website. Here are the links to their wonderful essays and I would encourage you to read them:
1. Essay by Pervin Rusi Taleyarkhan
2. Essay by Priya Giyarpuram Prasad & Polly Beth Sims
3. Essay by Karan Talwar & Karthik Khanna
Our Cross Border Judges:
I want to really thank our wonderful panel of judges for taking time out from their busy schedules and doing a stellar job of assessing these entries. As I’d noted in an earlier post:
“We’ve been very fortunate to line up an incredible array of judges representing a multitude of jurisdictions including the UK, US, New Zealand, Canada and Scotland. In case you’re wondering how the multi-jurisdictional numbers add up, you have to dig a bit into the backgrounds of this stellar panel.
Professor David Vaver, perhaps the most cited IP scholar in Canada is originally from New Zealand. He moved to Canada, then to the UK (where he served as the Director of the Oxford IP Research Center for a good number of years and helped it gain international recognition through several innovative initiatives) and back again to Canada where the folks at Osgoode refuse to let him retire–after all, with him around, its Osgoode as it gets.
Professor Lionel Bently, one of Europe’s leading IP scholars and author of several books and articles including a classic treatise on intellectual property law (which is now the standard IP text book in many jurisdictions, including India) is of English vintage but spent a considerable amount of time in Australia.
Professor Graeme Dinwoodie is of Scottish heritage and spent a large part of his career teaching in the United States, where, among other things he ran a very reputed IP programe out of Chicago Kent law school, wrote a stream of high impact scholarly pieces on various facets of intellectual property law and was conferred with one of the highest teaching awards (the Pattishall Medal for Teaching Excellence) before he moved to the UK to take over as the Director of the Oxford IP Research Centre (OIPRC).
As for Judge Rader, although he has not switched borders yet, his reputation is by all accounts very “trans-border” in scope. Many would agree that he qualifies as a well known mark in several jurisdictions, where he routinely visits and speaks, leaving one to ponder the source of his indefatigable energy, good cheer and occasional creative outpourings on the non IP side, which have rightly earned him the sobriquet,the Rock Star of IP.“
Judicial Assessments:
For those interested, here is a link to a document capturing the core essence of the judges’ assessments/rankings (anonymised of course), so you get a snapshot view of what each of them felt about the essays.
A Special Thank You:
Before I end, I really want to thank the following people who played a significant role in seeing this competition to fruition:
i) Sai Vinod (ex student, NUJS) for intiating this competition and seeing it all the way through till the end. But for his insistence, this would have never happened.
ii) Shan Kohli (ex student, NUJS and Trainee Solicitor, Linklaters) for being very generous with her time and helping us with the internal shortlisting process.
iii) Nayantara Ranganathan (IV Yr. NUJS) for designing the poster for the competition.
iv) Professor Ishwara Bhat, Vice Chancellor, NUJS for encouraging these activities aimed at encouraging students to exercise their creative faculties.
And last, but certainly not the least, I really want to thank the Ministry of HRD for setting up these IP chairs and providing us excellent support to create more IP awareness around the country. And in particular to Mr Ashok Thakur, (Secretary, MHRD), Ms Veena Ish (Joint Secretary) and Mr Raghavender (Copyright Registrar) for going out of their way to encourage our activities.
VERY VERY VERY GOODDDDDDDDDDD