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.

Marrakesh “Blind” Treaty Okayed for Signature and Ratification

/ By / Copyright

SpicyIP is given to believe that the Indian cabinet recently cleared the historical Marrakesh treaty (an international instrument that carves out a copyright exception for the disabled) for both signature and ratification. It is expected that India would do this at the SCCR meeting in Geneva, starting today. This is perhaps the first time that a treaty has been okayed for both signature and ratification at one go by the cabinet. Kudos to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) […]

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Breaking News: IRRO Registration Refused!

/ By / Copyright

In a momentous development, the Government of India refused to re-register IRRO, a collecting society formed for the purpose of licensing books and other literary works. An official at the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) informed SpicyIP that the governmental order refusing registration was issued on the 5th of December for various reasons including the failure by IRRO to comply with the latest copyright rules mandating a general body meeting and election of members of governing council etc. Some

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Manner of Manufacturing Life? Dimminaco and the Ghost of Ayyangar

/ By / Patent

This was the tacky title of my BCL thesis submitted at the University of Oxford several years ago. To make matter’s worse, I began with a quote from Nicole Kidman in “The Others” (a thriller from Alejandro Amenabar): “Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead.” As one might expect, it didn’t go down very well with my stiff examiners who decided to reward me with rather parsimonious grades. But thankfully, the Stanford

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Light on IP

/ By / Innovation, Patent

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ Plato On this festive occasion, let us embrace the light and bask in its lustrous luminescence! Happy Diwali to all our readers! Speaking of light, tis’ time to hark back to our transparency campaign, a large part of our raison d’etre. From 2007 when we first shot off a protest petition (signed by many of you) to

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Breaking News: India Rejects Compulsory Licensing Application at Threshold

/ By / Patent

In an earlier email message to the SpicyIP group of subscribers around two weeks ago (as below), I’d reflected on the delay accompanying the processing of India’s second CL application filed by BDR Pharma against Dasatinb, an anticancer drug patented by BMS. And contrasted that delay with the speed with which India’s first CL application dealing with Nexavar had been decided by the erstwhile Controller General (CG), PH Kurian. Thankfully, the matter has now been decided. In a fairly comprehensive

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Damages for David: The New Face of Indian IP?

/ By / Patent

A constant refrain from a number of Indian IP practitioners is that when it comes to IP damages, Indian courts award a mere pittance. If recent trends in medical negligence cases are anything to go by (see this Legally India article, where the Supremes awarded a whooping 6 crores [1.3 million USD]), one can expect that damages in other areas of law (such as IP) might also shoot up in the years to come. The fact that our courts were

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Copyright Amendments: A Fair Balance?

/ By / Copyright

In a belated post (and a severely belated one at that), we bring you this special report on a conference held last year in Kolkata titled ‘Copyright Amendments, 2012: A Fair Balance?’ The two-day event was organized by the MHRD IP Chair at National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) with the help of the following partners:  i) MHRD IP Chair at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT)  ii) IPTLS (a student run IP and tech law society) and  iii) NUJS

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Computer Confusion Confounded

/ By / Patent

  Computer software patentability continues to confound. So says this caustic certiorari petition filed at the US Supreme Court, passed on by the wonderful Hal Wegner who, in his inimitable style, transmits latest US patent developments to many of us through his email group.   For those interested, a copy of this petition that takes issue with a rather splintered CAFC decision in CLS vs Alice Corp is available on Managing Intellectual Property, a leading global IP magazine.   So how do we

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Patent Hypocrisy and the Paradox of Indian IP

/ By / Patent

In an earlier email message to the SpicyIP subscribers, I’d linked to an article on Apple vs Samsung and noted as below: “For those following the Apple vs Samsung patent wars, this latest move by the US government to veto an ITC decision favouring Samsung once again reflects the well known truth that “national” interest trumps all else.  But then unfortunately, national interest is to be read narrowly as only “US” national interest. For when other countries such as India

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Cold News for Cricket Score Monopolies: India Rejects the "Hot News" Doctrine

/ By / Copyright

In an extremely well crafted decision, Justice Bhat of the Delhi High Court reversed a lower court decision and rejected the application of the “hot news” doctrine to India. I’d recounted the facts in an earlier blog post:     “Star India (the plaintiff) was given an exclusive right to broadcast matches organized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). In particular, it was given a 72 hour monopoly over all media rights, including the right to

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