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.

Guest Post: Innovation for the 21st Century

/ By / Competition Law, Innovation

We are very honoured to bring you a guest post from Professor Michael Carrier, a renowned thought leader in IP and competition policy. His post titled “Fostering Innovation by Fixing US Law” captures the central arguments he makes in a very engaging book titled “Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law“. Given that India is soon going to face very challenging jurisprudential issues around the application of competition law to intellectual property, Michael’s […]

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India’s First Innovation Czar and the Creation of an Innovation Eco-System

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Dr Sam Pitroda, a leading innovator, entrepreneur and thought leader was recently appointed as India’s first Innovation Czar, a post curiously titled as the “Infrastructure, Innovation and Information” adviser to the Prime Minister. Perhaps this the first step towards having a full fledged Ministry of Innovation, something that Dr Mashelkar has been advocating for a while now. As one can appreciate, this is a critical milestone in the history of Indian innovation policy. The Mint published an editorial of mine

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Introducing CLaM: Democratizing Law Making Through Open and Collaborative Participation

/ By / Copyright

I’m extremely happy to announce that after months of planning and designing, we’ve finally managed to execute our collaborative law-making platform, titled CLaM. Yes, this is the very same CLIPP model that we’d highlighted earlier on this blog..though we’re now rechristened it as a simpler sounding CLaM (though there is no nexus between our model and a certain mollusc that is a favourite with many sea food lovers). This would not have been possible, but for the brilliant and relentless

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The "Appeal" of a Pre Grant Rejection

/ By / Uncategorized

Prakruthi analysed an interesting Bombay High Court decision that suggested that a party aggrieved by a pre-grant opposition decision could file a writ before the High Court. Adithya Reddy, a guest blogger takes issue with this decision and argues that a “post grant” opposition mechanism is an efficacious alternative remedy; therefore High Courts ought not to entertain writs (under Art 226 of the Constitution of India) against pre-grant opposition decisions. I want to offer a third alternative in this debate,

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Challenging Pre Grant Orders through Writs: Whither "Alternative Remedies"?

/ By / Uncategorized

We have a very interesting guest post from Adithya Reddy, a bright patent litigator from Chennai. He argues that a post grant opposition is an efficacious alternative remedy and that therefore High Courts ought not to entertain writ petitions against pre-grant opposition decisions. Here goes: The Bombay High Court’s recent decision regarding Cadilla Health Care’s patent claim and requirements of Section 3(d), commented upon in an earlier post by Prakruthi, revisits a question that was left unexplained by the Madras

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Copyright Infringement and ISP Liability: A Critical Flaw in India’s IT Act

/ By / Copyright

An earlier guest post opined that the recently amended Information Technology (IT) Act absolves internet service provider (ISP’s) and other intermediaries from IP infringement liability, provided they satisfy certain pre-requisites. Kaushik Krishnan, one of the brightest law students I have ever encountered thinks our guest got it wrong in one cardinal respect. I think Kaushik is spot on…but will wait to hear your thoughts on this. The guest post states in pertinent part that: “The most significant ramification of the

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CII Workshop on Patent Strategies

/ By / Uncategorized

GLOBAL BEST PRACTICES IN PATENT INFORMATION : ANALYSIS AND PATENT PROTECTION STRATEGIES Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) & Andhra Pradesh Technology Development and Promotion Centre (APTDC) in its IP Capacity Building Series’ IX is organizing a Workshop on Global Best Practices in Patent Information Analysis and Patent Protection Strategies. More details including registration form etc can be found at the SpicyIP Resources Page. Location and Time: 5 December 2009 from 1000-1700 Hrs at Hotel Taj Banjara, Hyderabad. This Workshop is

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Copyright Access for the Disabled and Collaborative IP Policy

/ By / Copyright

In previous posts, we covered the Right to Read Campaign, a campaign aimed at increasing access to copyrighted works for the print impaired. As many of you know, most works of literature, science and the arts are practically out of bounds for the disabled, unless converted to readable formats such as Braille or digitized and accessed via expensive screen reader software such as JAWS. Recently, this campaign, the brainchild of CIS and Inclusive Planet, came home to us at NUJS,

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IP Job Opportunities in Pune and Gurgaon

/ By / Uncategorized

Two key IP positions are open at one of India’s leading law firms, details of which are below. If interested in applying, please write to spicyipjob[at]gmail.com with your CV. Location: Pune (1 position) and Gurgaon (1 position) Roles and Responsibilities: Prosecution and advisory work related to trademarks, copyrights and designs. IPR litigation experience would be an advantage. Should be able to handle IPR work independently. Likely to also involve IP transactional and corporate work. Required Qualification: i) 3 – 5

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Legality of Grey Market Goods in India

/ By / Patent

Sai Deepak did an excellent post capturing the essence of a recent judgment by Justice Muralidhar (of the Roche vs Cipla fame). While the judgment got it right in several places, and will come as music to the ears of patentees, who’ve so far been at the receiving end of the Indian judiciary, it loses out on a fabulous opportunity to clarify the scope of section 107A(b), the section dealing with parallel imports. As many of you may recollect, this

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