Accessing Ayyangar Openly: SpicyIP Teams with EBC

Open access lies at the heart of SpicyIP’s mission to democratize the discussion around intellectual property rights. Fortunately for us, we’ve been blessed with some wonderful partners in the past.

One that stands out is Eastern Book Company Pvt Ltd (EBC), a leading legal publishing house. First, they agreed (upon our request) to create a savvy searchable digital duplicate of the Ayyangar Committee Report on Patents. We uploaded it on our SpicyIP resources page, and here is the precise link for those interested in accessing this famed report (“Report on the Revision of the Patents Law, September 1959”).

As many of you know, this report formed the blueprint for the 1970 Indian patents act, and was, by most accounts, the key driving force behind the stellar success of the Indian generic industry. As I’d noted in the past:

“The success of the generic industry today is testimony, albeit in some small way, to the brilliance of  (Justice Ayyangar’s) foresight.”

As to whether or not Ayyanar’s policy recommendations continue to hold sway today is a highly contentious issue, with heated arguments on either side of the political fence. I’d noted the unusual “policy style” dependence of the Indian patent office on this report (treating it as a sacrosanct bible of sorts), but this was in 2005. I’m not so sure that this reverence holds true anymore.

Despite the monumental importance of this report, hard copies were hard to come by (there were but a few copies circulating around in very select law firms and a handful of libraries). So we have much to thank EBC for, and in particular Sumeet Malik, their dynamic director and star editor, who I had the great privilege of going to law school with.

Ayyangar on Trademarks

More recently, EBC made us another wonderful offering. The “Report of Shri Justice N Rajagopala Ayyangar on Trademarks Law, 1955”, another outstanding report from the stable of the sagacious judge.

Yes, one man (almost single-handedly) gave us two outstanding IP policy reports. Unfortunately, despite the proliferation of alleged IP experts and committees, we’ve not had anything half as worthy in the recent past! (and I’m being kind when I say “half”!)

Anyway, more of our policy paralysis and lack of imagination later. For now, please do consider helping further this open access mission in your own small way. If you wish to partner in this venture and/or offer support (financially or otherwise through digitising documents, passing on important historical documents that you have with you etc), please do reach out to us. We’d be very grateful, and the larger IP and innovation/creativity community will have much to thank you for!

ps: Image from here.