A friend of mine informs me that a leading international mediator (one of the top 5 in the world) is willing to mediate a high stakes IP dispute for free. Any takers? Please let me know soon. He will be in Bangalore soon and can do this between August 23rd and 25th. If interested, please email me at <[email protected]>
We’ve reflected on the merits of mediation in previous posts here and here. I’m given to understand that this creative win-win approach is being deployed in a number of IP disputes these days. And would be grateful for more leads on such cases from our readers in the know.
For those interested, we’ve included a significant component of mediation (and other ADR) in our quest to convert underprivileged IDIA scholars into CHAMPS (lawyers who are Creative, Holistic, Altruistic, Mavericks and Problem Solvers).
Interestingly, I had an exchange with a leading IP persona on mediation vs the harsh adversarial process. And extract my email response as below:
“But honestly, I’m finding (more often than not), that my legal training enables me to win an argument easily….only to find later that what the other person argued (and lost) was much closer to the truth! Its a bit unnerving, but I guess we’ve become addicted to the process. Truth be damned! As an IDIA trainee to whom I was pontificating on the power of the law once remarked: “The law is so strange…. whoever tells the better story wins! Even if their story is not true!” After more than 20 years of studying and practising the law, I couldn’t have put it better! Indeed, the adversarial process has damaged us deeply. They say that even in wedding cards, a lawyer sees the “weds” as “versus”! Wish I’d paid more attention to my classes on ADR (alternative dispute resolution), including mediation and other less aggressive (and adversarial) ways of dispute resolution. Ones that paved the way for more creative solutions and left both parties better off.”
ps: Image from here
