Author name: Shamnad Basheer

Prof. (Dr.) Shamnad Basheer founded SpicyIP in 2005. He's also the Founder of IDIA, a project to train underprivileged students for admissions to the leading law schools. He served for two years as an expert on the IP global advisory council (GAC) of the World Economic Forum (WEF). In 2015, he received the Infosys Prize in Humanities in 2015 for his work on legal education and on democratising the discourse around intellectual property law and policy. The jury was headed by Nobel laureate, Prof. Amartya Sen. Professional History: After graduating from the NLS, Bangalore Prof. Basheer joined Anand and Anand, one of India’s leading IP firms. He went on to head their telecommunication and technology practice and was rated by the IFLR as a leading technology lawyer. He left for the University of Oxford to pursue post-graduate studies, completing the BCL, MPhil and DPhil as a Wellcome Trust scholar. His first academic appointment was at the George Washington University Law School, where he served as the Frank H Marks Visiting Associate Professor of IP Law. He then relocated to India in 2008 to take up the MHRD Chaired Professorship in IP Law at WB NUJS, a leading Indian law school. Later, he was the Honorary Research Chair of IP Law at Nirma University and also a visiting professor of law at the National Law School (NLS), Bangalore. Prof. Basheer has published widely and his articles have won awards, including those instituted by ATRIP, the Stanford Technology Law Review and CREATe. He was consulted widely by the government, industry, international organisations and civil society on a variety of IP issues. He also served on several government committees.

Copyfraud, Collecting Societies and Quixotic Crusades

/ By / Copyright

More than a year ago, a curious incident cropped up in the copyright circles. Saint Tyagaraja’s music (recorded by various Carnatic music enthusiasts and uploaded on select YouTube channels) was hit with a copyright claim! An all too pliant YouTube immediately took down the content, thereby placating the purported copyright owner. Bizarre to say the least, since the good saint had by then been dead a good 200 years! And had never ever claimed copyright, if ever there was such […]

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The Wow of the Now: Of Flow, Creativity and IP

/ By / Innovation

What once was new is now old And what is now new will soon be old And so it goes With friends and foes   Once a friend, now a foe And now a friend, but a foe before   Nothing to hold Nothing to last Each day is gold But flowing so fast   Regret not the past And fret not the future The moment is now Let’s make it a wow!   Happy “Now” Year to all of

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Breaking News: Corrective (Anti) Copying Action in Roche vs Cipla

/ By / Patent

A rather remarkable development in the Indian legal space! In the first ever pharmaceutical patent trial case in India (Roche vs Cipla), judges accept the charge of plagiarism (they had copied parts of their initial summation of the lower court order). And then go on to apologise to the authors of the piece (from which their intern had liberally borrowed). Lastly, they expunge the “copied” paragraphs from their judgment. Hats off to Justice Nadrajog and Justice Gupta of the Delhi High Court

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Qu-IP: Innovative Impotence in Intellectual Intercourse?

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Readers may recollect an early series of ours titled “Qu-IP”, where we sought to collate some of the wittiest and whackiest IP quips/sentiments. Well, here comes one.. after a rather long hiatus. In one of my exam papers, I’d asked students to reflect on Fritz Machlup’s famous quote: “If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had

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A “Madhu” Victory for Merck: Busting the Patent Bias Myth!

/ By / Patent

Does India Suffer a Patent Bias? Clearly not! At least if one were to go by the Delhi High Courts’ recent ruling vindicating Merck’s patent (covering an anti diabetic drug, Sitagliptin) and restraining Glenmark from manufacturing and selling a generic version of the same.  Will the Modi government now please flaunt this decision to our US counterparts who’ve been ranting against the Indian IP system? Here is a Mint piece by Shreeja Sen and others highlighting the salient aspects of this decision;

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Breaking News: Delhi HC Issues Notice on “Patent Working” PIL

/ By / Patent

In a development that will have significant ramifications for patent working norms in India, the Delhi High Court (Chief Justice Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath) issued notice today to the Government of India in a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) filed by me. I was represented by my counsels, Abhimanyu Bhandari and Sai Vinod. Both represented me probono and I have to really thank both of them for their outstanding advocacy. I also want to thank Murali Neelakantan, Hersh Sewak, Gopal

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A Lethal Legal League?

/ By / Copyright, Others

In a piece for the Wire (a pioneering new media initiative by the famed duo of Siddharth Varadarajan [former editor in chief of the Hindu] and Siddharth Bhatia [founding editor in chief of DNA]), I reflect on the cosy cabals that plague our legal ecosystem. Ranging from a judicial fiefdom (collegium of senior judges that select their very own) to the notorious Bar Council of India (that awards dodgy tenders) to the CLAT clique of vice chancellors who refuse to institutionalise

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Interrogating Interim Injunctions (I-3): A New SpicyIP Series

/ By / Patent

We’re unleashing a new project/case series to highlight the potential inequity of patent injunctions that take forever to vacate–particularly the ex-parte ones. See our posts here and here expressing our angst against ex parte injunctions. Rupali just illustrated a very egregious illustration of one such injunction in her wonderfully articulated blog posts here and here. Balaji and Saahil will soon pick up on this theme and cover some of these cases more extensively. We (a team comprising Swaraj, Balaji, Saahil Dama, Rupali

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From Innovation to Outnovation?

/ By / Copyright, Innovation, Patent

I was asked to do a post on innovation for the Infosys Science Foundation blog. So here goes. I lament on the triteness of the term “innovation” and argue that we should add another term to our innovation lexicon, namely: “outnovation”! As if we didn’t have enough words already! But then wordplay is the only play some of us know. Original article on the Infosys Blog can be found here, and the text of the piece is below: Lexicological Innovation: Outnovation? 

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Merck vs Glenmark: Speeding Up Trials and Injuncting Injunctions

/ By / Patent

Only a week or so ago, I wrote an op-ed in the Mint highlighting instances of “Jugaad Justice” from our courts. And one such instance turned on the maverick Justice Katju ordering that interim injunctions be dispensed with in complex IP cases. And that one move directly to the trial stage, albeit an expedited one. As I’d noted: “Years ago, in a rare flash of intuitive intelligence, the maverick justice Markandey Katju did away with “interim” injunctions, often the first phase of

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