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.

Patent Eligibility and the Logic of Law and Science

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Prashant raised very pertinent point in response to my last post on “patent competence” stating that: “As is obvious from the procedural and evidentiary mistakes that are happening before the Patent Office, the law component of the Patent Agent Examination is completely inadequate. A simpler option, in my opinion, would be to include some compulsory legal subjects as a part of the qualifying examination to become a patent agent. For e.g. the Law of Evidence, Statutory Interpretation, constitutional law, legal […]

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Patent Competence?

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We’ve had some very provocative posts on the qualifications necessary for patent practice in India. While some thought that a science/technical degree was an absolute must, others disagreed. A lot of these different view points hinged on the kind of patent practice that one was speaking about: patent drafting/prosecution vs patent litigation/advisory. Most appeared to agree that for patent drafting and prosecution, a science/technical degree was a must. However, here again, an issue was raised: can a software engineer draft

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Romanticising Innovation and Showcasing Reality

/ By / Innovation

Readers may recollect an old and favourite theme of mine, “Romanticising Innovation”. The basic idea being that notwithstanding our highly politicised debates around patents, we ought not to lose our focus on innovation. In fact, we must actively romanticise innovation and creativity. This is likely to yield far better dividends than continuously barking up the “patents” tree. I elaborate on this aspect in an article in a FICCI newsletter, touching on the movie 3 Idiots, grassroots innovation and utility models.

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A Layman’s Narrative of Patents, TK and Biopiracy

/ By / Patent

As many of you may know, SpicyIP has been around for about 5 years now (since 2005). Since then, we’ve mainly conveyed the latest in Indian IP through the medium of “text”. Often times, we’ve used “images” too. However, we’ve fallen short on the video (and youtube) count. All that is set to change. We bring you our first video, albeit an amateurish and rather badly shot one (from my digital camera). What amazed me was the fact that a

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Off Topic: IDIA and Legal Reasoning Competition

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For those of you blessed with the talent to craft clever questions on legal reasoning, there’s a competition being run by the IDIA project. IDIA (Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education) seeks to enhance access to legal education by training kids from underprivileged backgrounds for the law entrance examination (CLAT). The hope is that with intensive CLAT (and English) training, some of these children might make it to the premier law schools in India and have a shot

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Issuing "Radio" Compulsory Licences in the Wake of a "Mirchi" Controversy

/ By / Copyright

As expected, a writ petition has been filed challenging the legality of the appointment of the current chairman of the Copyright Board, Raghbir Singh. This came up before Justice Sikri of the Delhi High Court yesterday and notices have been issued. We’ve been dealing with this controversial appointment in several earlier blog posts. In one of these posts, I had questioned his eligibility on the ground that he was 66 years old at the time of his appointment and therefore

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Copyright Band-its and Public Interest: A Tainted Compulsory Licensing Decision?

/ By / Copyright

Tis the season of compulsory licensing. First, we have a proactive DIPP exploring ways to create a more optimal compulsory licensing regime in India. And now we have a quasi judicial body (the copyright board) deciding an actual compulsory licensing dispute..a decision that has been the subject of a crisp and succinct review in this guest post. This copyright board decision pegging compulsory licensing (CL) rates for the broadcast of music at 2% of advertisement revenues earned by radio stations

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Compulsory Licensing of Music: An Analysis of the Copyright Board Decision

/ By / Copyright

We bring you a detailed analysis of the decision in the big ticket copyright compulsory licensing dispute (sound recording companies vs radio stations) by Karthy Nair, a sparkling 4th year student of NUJS. Prashant had already introduced this decision on the blog. The recent judgment of the Copyright Board in Music Broadcast Pvt. Ltd vs. Phonographic Performance Ltd seems to suggest that the Buggles may have been a tad too hasty in predicting the untimely demise of the radio. In

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PMO, MNC, CL and Indian IP Policy Making: Whither Representation and Transparency?

/ By / Data Exclusivity

A note circulated by the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) asking various government ministries to consider a representation made by OPPI (the Indian pharmaceutical body representing the interests of innovator pharmaceutical companies, mainly MNC’s) has stirred a hornet’s nest. Was it legitimate for the PMO to consider a representation from big bad MNC’s? Of course, it was! This is a democracy and all stakeholders are entitled to be heard. Would a smaller IP stakeholder representation have merited this kind of attention

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From Independence to Inter-dependence: Some thoughts (and belated wishes)

/ By / Innovation

Belated independence day wishes to all our readers. I meant to put up something yesterday, but faced some inevitable delays. Since I couldn’t locate a direct India IP link to peg to this years’ independence day wishes, I thought I’d share the text of a small talk delivered to the students at NUJS. It has references to creativity and innovation…and should therefore pass the “relevance” test for this blog. Fortunately, it is not as depressing as the “Republic Day” speech

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