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.

Access to Legal Education: Old is Not Gold!

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Kshitij’s well written post raised issues that are very close to my heart. Particularly since I think its a great idea to open up the 5 year programs at the premier NLU’s (national law schools such as NLS, Bangalore) to brilliant engineers and science grads from IIT’s and the like. Given that we have a dearth of good patent attorneys in this country, I have a clear vested interested in advocating for this. So what stands in the way? A […]

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Legal Education: 3 vs 5 years?

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We bring you a guest post from Kshitij Malhotra on a topic close to my heart. As Kshitij rightly argues, we need to create more 3 year programs of a quality that matches up to the best 5 year programs. The Rajiv Gandhi School of IP law at IIT Kharagpur is a good step in this direction. DU has always had an enviable 3 year program record. And now the Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) promises to give a complete

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From a ‘Bark" to a "Bite": The Potency of Section 8

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Section 8 of the Indian patents act requires that patent applicants disclose all information pertaining to foreign counterparts of the Indian application in issue (i.e. if the Indian application has corresponding US and EU applications covering the same or substantially the same invention, then information pertaining to such applications must be provided to the IPO). This provision comes a close second to section 3(d) in terms of its potential to cause sleepless nights for patentees. And has been the subject

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Comment Moderation: From Ad Hominem Irrelevance to Constructive Engagement

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As many of you know, we moderate comments. And despite continuous appeals to keep comments healthy and non personal, some of our commentators insist on using foul language, and personally attacking blog authors’ as well as other IP stakeholders that are mentioned in the blog post. We also receive several comments that are irrelevant and have nothing to do with the subject matter at issue. Illustratively, in response to one of our blog posts, we received a comment asking us

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The Pegasys Compulsory Licensing Puzzle?

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Pegasys earned the distinction of being one of the first MNC pharma patents to be granted in India in the wake of the 2005 amendments. The drug (pegylated interferon for treating Hep C virus) underwent a very hard fought post grant opposition filed by Wockhardt, an Indian generic major and Sankalp, an NGO. And came away unscathed after Controller Madhusudhanan found it to be valid. His decision is easily one of the most nuanced patent decisions, where he carefully reviews

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Breaking News: Matrix Restrained from Infringing Roche’s Cancer Patent

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Tarceva, an anti cancer molecule that created patent history in India (for inter-alia ushering in “public interest” into Indian patent jurisprudence) continues to make legal waves. And big ones at that. Over the last few years, this molecule has been the subject of multiple legal proceedings in India, with a full fledged patent infringement trial ongoing between Cipla and Roche before the Delhi high court; a counterclaim against Roche’s patent validity pending with the very same Delhi High Court; a

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Ashoka Seeks Entrepreneurial Leader for Law

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Ashoka, global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, seeks an entrepreneurial leader for its Law for All Initiative.About Ashoka Since 1980, Ashoka has pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship, investing in more than 2,500 leading social entrepreneurs – practical visionaries with systems-changing ideas — known as Ashoka Fellows, in over 70 countries. Ashoka Fellows work at the systemic level and Ashoka distills action-principles that cut across the work of these Fellows and creates frameworks for collaborative entrepreneurship to author

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Examiner Drought and Letter to Government

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Subsequent to my post highlighting the lamentable shortage of examiners at the Indian Patent Office, I wrote the following letter addressed to both Mr PH Kurian, Controller General of Patents and Mr V Bhaskar, Joint Secretary, DIPP (Dept of Industrial Policy and Promotion). Here is the text of the letter for those interested: Dear Sirs: I refer you to a blog post that I wrote pertaining to the dire shortage of examiners at the Indian Patent Office. The post can

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Patently Shameful Career Prospects?

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In a hard hitting article, CH Unni reports on the rather deplorable career prospects at the Indian Patent Office. I extract below: “An Indian examiner’s monthly salary and other incentives at Rs.35,000-40,000 is the lowest and less than a third of her counterpart in foreign patent offices even after taking into consideration the purchase power parity. ….“We have been working for the office for more than seven years and in return we have not got a single promotion or pay

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WIPO and Patent Exclusions: Public Health and Medical Methods

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At the start of this year, WIPO commissioned a group of us (under the stewardship of Professor Lionel Bently, the famed Cambridge IP don and co-author of the leading treatise: Bently and Sherman on IP) to do a report on exceptions, exclusions and limitations in patent law. This report was prepared pursuant to the work at the SCP (Standing Committee on the Law of Patents) and will be tabled at the 15th SCP session this October. The background to this

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