Celebrating the 50th birth anniversary of Prof. Basheer, earlier this year, we had promised to return with the 2026 edition of the Shamnad Basheer Essay Competition on Intellectual Property Law. And we are now delighted to announce the launch of this year’s competition!
A master with the pen, Prof. Basheer continues to inspire us with his ability to make complex legal ideas accessible to a wider audience. Our long-time readers, and the many others who have engaged with his work, would know that his scholarship was intellectually rigorous, yet never shied away from being unconventional, playful, or provocative. Another aspect of his writings was how forward-looking they were, with the ability to engage with emerging developments in technology, law, culture, and policy while consistently questioning established assumptions about IP laws. These aspects of his scholarship remain as relevant today as ever, perhaps even more so, owing to the different developments and discussions around pressing issues like AI, data exclusivity, patent term extensions, access to medicines, access to knowledge, and so on.
As a testament to his prolific writing, Prof. Basheer won prizes in three prestigious essay competitions. The first was an essay competition held by the Stanford Technology Law Review, where he won the second prize for a great piece on the ‘Policy Style’ Reasoning of the Indian Patent Office. The second essay competition that he won was held by the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP) for young academics, where his essay on Section 3(d) of the Patents Act secured the winning prize. The third was an essay competition held by CREATe on the topic of how Artificial Intelligence would change the practice of intellectual property law. Prof. Basheer won the second prize in that competition for his essay titled ‘Artificial Invention: Mind the Machine’.
The details for this year’s competition are given below:-
Submission Guidelines
Eligibility: The competition will be open to students currently enrolled in any LL.B. program (or its equivalent – meaning students enrolled in J.D. programs can take part) across the world, as well as to those who have completed their first law degree in 2024 or later.
Registration: There is no registration fee or registration process for the competition. You may e-mail us your essay whenever it is ready, within the deadline.
Co-authorship: Only single-author submissions will be accepted for the essay competition. A submission cannot have two or more authors. Submissions with more than one author will not be considered. If your work has any substantial similarity with an earlier piece you have been involved with, sole or co-authored, you must disclose this at the time of submitting your essay, along with a copy of the co-authored work for us to decide whether it can be considered a new piece or not. If you are not sure whether the similarity is substantial or not, you should disclose it anyway. Failure to do so will result in disqualification.
AI Tools: Use of AI tools is now pervasive. While everyone knows it is technically impossible to have 100% proof that AI tools have been used to write text, we hope that it is also understood that we receive 100s of submissions every week and it has become super easy to see the mediocrity and sameness that AI tools produce when used for writing texts. With that being said, these are our rules for the competition:
The essay’s argument, structure and text must be your own work. You may use:
(a) spelling and grammar checkers that correct errors but that do not rewrite your sentences for you, and
(b) AI tools to find or understand sources – not to provide sources for your arguments. You must read and verify every source you cite. Whether you use AI or not, substantively wrong or non-existent footnotes may lead to the essay being disqualified.
You may not use AI tools to draft, rewrite, paraphrase, expand or summarise any part of the essay, or to generate its argument or outline. Your covering letter must include a statement (max. 100 words) of any AI tools used and how; (“no AI used” is a valid statement too).
Ensure you maintain draft history either via Google Docs (preferred), or via saved versions on your word processor of choice. Shortlisted entrants will be asked to discuss their essay in a short online conversation, and may be asked for draft history. (For clarity: this section only refers to draft history. The submitted essay must be in docx format.
Any citation that does not exist, or does not support the proposition it is cited for, may lead to disqualification regardless of how it arose. Before any disqualification, the candidate will be told the concern and given an opportunity to respond.
Selection of topic: Like the previous editions, participants are free to choose any topic relating to intellectual property law. We particularly encourage creative and original approaches that engage with contemporary IP challenges and draw inspiration from Prof. Basheer’s scholarship.
Two values that consistently guided his academic writing were transparency and democratic participation in the processes of lawmaking and implementation. His commitment to transparency in the enforcement of India’s patent law even led him to litigate against the Patent Office to secure the public’s right to information. He was also playful in his writing and never afraid to think or communicate unconventionally.
We encourage participants to bring the same spirit to their entries and carry forward his commitment to rigorous, independent and socially conscious scholarship.
Word limit: 5,000 words, inclusive of footnotes.
Format:
- Essays must be submitted in MS Word format (docx), with 1.5 line spacing. Please do not submit essays in PDF format.
- We are not prescribing a specific citation or footnoting style. Consistency in the chosen style will suffice.
Deadline and Other Details
- All submissions must be original, unpublished, and should not be presented in any paper presentation competitions.
- Essays published or presented elsewhere before the announcement of the competition results will not be considered.
- Submission deadline: December 30, 2026; 11:59 PM
- Please email all submissions and queries to submissions[at]spicyip[dot]com only.
Please also include a covering letter mentioning:
- The law school where you are currently enrolled, or, if you are a recent graduate, the law school from which you graduated and the year of graduation.
- A declaration specifying the use of AI tools in the essay. For more on this, please check the guidelines on the use of AI tools above.
Prizes for Winning Essays
Apart from getting published on SpicyIP, the winning essays will receive the following prizes:
- First prize: INR 25,000
- Second prize: INR 15,000
- Third prize: INR 10,000
Evaluation
The essays will be evaluated on the basis of the author’s creativity and analytical strength in articulating their arguments. The judges will also take into account entries that demonstrate the values Prof. Basheer embodied through his life and work.
The SpicyIP team will shortlist the entries for consideration by an external panel of judges, whose decision will be final. The judges for this edition will be announced separately. We request readers to keep an eye on the blog for further announcements!
We look forward to reading your submissions and, more importantly, to seeing the new questions, perspectives and arguments that this year’s participants bring to the IP law discourse.
