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.

Is "Science" Essential for Creating Patent Lawyers: Some "General" Thoughts

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In an earlier post, I discussed a Supreme Court case filed against the grant of BCI (Bar Council of India) permission to IIT-Kharagpur’s Rajiv Gandhi School of IP (RGSOIPL) and noted that: “Given the sheer dearth of skilled patent lawyers in this country, I am very partial to the idea of a specialised IP law school. Particularly since the premier legal institutes in the form of the National law schools do not focus on science at all, a discipline that […]

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"Quinn" Poll for Leading Patent Blog: Please Vote

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For those interested, Gene Quinn of IP Watchdog is conducting a poll of the top patent blogs. He has listed 50 leading patent law blogs and is calling for readers to indicate their favourites. SpicyIP is grateful for making this shortlist. Gene’s survey comprises two key questions:i) Which is your favourite blog (only one selection can be made here)ii) Which blogs do you regularly read (multiple selections can be made here) Voting continues till 30 June and the results are

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"Bullet" Kurian Unleashes More Reforms To Indian Patent and Trademark Office

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“Bullet” Kurian, the swift high energy Controller General of the Indian Patent and Trademark Office, has struck again. And this time with a good 5-6 policy measures aimed at streamlining the functioning of India’s patent and trademark administration and making it more transparent and efficient. Some of the prominent ones are listed below: 1. Specialised Work Allocation An oft cited problem with the Indian patent office is the fact that patent applications are often allocated arbitrarily to examiners, without regard

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Susbscription to SpicyIP Posts

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We had some issues with the “google groups” box that was prominently displayed on the blog earlier. Therefore we switched to Feedblitz, which was the second best option. We’ve now resolved the google groups issue and have the box back. For those of you who wish to subscribe to SpicyIP posts (this way, you can receive all posts in your email inbox without having to come back to the blog each time to check for new posts), please enter your

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"IP" Centric Law Degree by IIT-K Threatened

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As some of you may be aware, a generous bequest by US billionaire Vinod Gupta helped kickstart the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property law (RGSOIPL), India’s first specialised law school, focusing on intellectual property law (IP). This school, which is based out of IIT-Kharagpur has been operational since 2006 and has strong ties to the George Washington University law school, one of the top IP law schools from the US. Although this law school does not only teach IP,

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Ramkumar Loses Case Before Indian Customs Authorities

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Indian customs authorities recently held against Ramkumar in a legal saga involving a patented dual SIM technology. By way of background, Ramkumar asserted patent rights over dual SIM enabled cell phones against several importers including Hansum India, Samsung and Micromax. While many of the smaller importers caved in and paid Ramkumar to have their consignments released by customs authorities, bigger players such as Samsung refused to pay and challenged his claims before customs authorities. As we’d noted several times on

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Bajaj vs TVS: Sai Deepak Cited by Judge

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In what must certainly be the greatest achievement for this blog ever since its inception in 2005, Sai Deepak’s incisive analysis in a previous post was cited extensively by the Madras High Court in the latest Bajaj vs TVS round. In pertinent part, an appellate bench of the Madras High Court reversed the finding of the lower court and held that Bajaj had not established a “prima facie” case of infringement in respect of its patented twin spark technology. Consequently,

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The Pharmaceutical Patent Debate: Whither Drug Safety?

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The Economic Times reports on a post grant opposition filed by Dr Reddy’s against Chantix, a hugely profitable anti smoking drug patented by Pfizer in India and many other countries in the world. As the name suggests, a post grant opposition is typically filed after the grant of a patent (an opponent is to file such oppn within a year of the grant). And this kind of oppn is subjected to a more stringent review than a pregrant oppn, since

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Ramkumar’s Lawyer Threatens "Defamation" Action

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Pursuant to our last post on the Ramkumar “Dual Sim” patent litigation, I received a very strongly worded letter threatening legal action against me from Ferdinand, a lawyer who represents Ramkumar. As many of you may be aware by now, Ramkumar’s efforts to unduly squeeze moneys out of cell phone importers by misrepresenting the scope of his claims has been denounced extensively on this blog. And naturally this must have irked Ferdinand considerably. Unfortunately Ferdinand has picked the wrong target.

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William New on WIPO Nominees

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William New, Editor in Chief of IPWatch, the most authentic and reputed source for any news/ analysis of international IP developments has a great piece on prospective names for top level WIPO posts. For those of you interested, IPWatch offers free subcription for readers from developing countries. In a previous post, we announced the filling in of one such post by NN Prasad (who was recently appointed as the Chef De Cabinet to the WIPO DG, Dr Francis Gurry). Hal

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