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.

Launching the SpicyIP Website: Our Special Note of Thanks

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The SpicyIP website would not have been possible, without the generosity and inputs of the following folks, to whom we are immensely grateful: i) Arjun Anand and Devinder Rawat of Zyrist: The first two resources on our IP Resources page (namely, the Ayyangar Report and a comprehensive version of the Indian Patents Act) were made possible, thanks to the generosity of these two gentleman. Zyrist, their baby is a fabulous platform that leverages web 2.0 to produce what I think […]

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World IP Day: Launching the SpicyIP Website

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SpicyIP wishes all its readers a very creative World IP Day! May this day bring us together to commemorate the value of intellectual property rights. May this day also help us appreciate that intellectual property rights are but “trees” in the “wood” of innovation and creativity …lest we miss the wood for the trees. May this day help us transition from IP extremism towards a “middle path” position that balances the interest of various IP stakeholders appropriately. May this day

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De-Coding the Law: What "Patent Information" Can be Published?

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In an earlier post, we had outlined a plan to send a letter to the Controller General of the Indian patent office on the World IP Day (tomorrow), calling for more “patent information” to be made public. We had referred in the letter to an annexure that would examine the provisions of the Patents Act to determine what kind of information can be made public by the office. Below is a draft version of the Annexure, which we hope to

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Breaking News: Roche Loses Tarceva Patent Case and Faces Hefty Fine

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The Appellate Bench at the Delhi High Court (consisting of Justice AP Shah and Justice Muralidhar) held in favour of Cipla and against Roche in a high profile patent litigation involving Roche’s patented drug Tarceva. Roche had sued Cipla before the Delhi high court, praying that a temporary restraining order be issued against Cipla. For a history of this case, please see our previous posts. The appeal in question was filed against the order of Justice Ravindra Bhat who had

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World IP Day: "Transparency" Letter to the Indian Patent Office

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As the World Intellectual Property Day approaches (it falls on this coming Sunday, the 26th), we wanted to bring to your attention two things. One is a petition that we wish to submit to the Patent Office, as is detailed in this post below. The other is a surprise that will be offered upto you only on the “D” day. Petition for More Patent Information to be Made Public As for the petition that is the subject matter of this

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The "Mashelkar Committee Report" on Pharma Patenting Resurfaces!

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The Mashelkar Committee Report on pharmaceutical and micro-organism patents, a report that hogged headlines in 2007 for all the wrong reasons was resubmitted to the government recently.The revised committee report reiterates the same conclusions as the earlier report submitted at the fag end of 2006, albeit with more strong reasoning to back up its conclusions. In short, the Committee notes, and rightly so, that any attempt to exclude an entire class of inventions i.e. incremental pharmaceutical inventions would violate the

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The "Kurian" Effect: Increased Efficiency at the Indian Patent Office

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SpicyIP was greatly enthused when Mr PH Kurian was appointed as the first IAS officer to head the Indian patent office. We expressed the hope that: “…Mr Kurian’s appointment will usher in some fresh thinking at the Indian patent office. As many familiar with the Indian patent office are aware, fresh and innovative thinking is an absolute must for this office, which has hitherto been beset with several problems, including understaffing, lack of “specialised” examiners/controllers, sub optimal access to specialised

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Software Copyright Raids: Striking an Optimal Balance

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A. Introduction In two previous posts, we discussed the issue of software raids from two different perspectives. One from the point of view of a raided party, to whom such raids are often inequitable, and the other from the point of a view of an IP enforcer, to whom speedy enforcement is absolutely essential for protecting their valuable IP rights. In a previous post, I promised that we we would run a future post “synthesizing some of the more recent

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Placing Software Piracy Raids in Perspective: A Response by the BSA

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Our last post on software raids elicited some very interesting responses. The post was an attempt to highlight the various inequities inherent in some intellectual property raids. No doubt some of these inequities can be easily addressed by courts that could, whilst granting the order to raid premises and collect evidence, ensure that the business of the raided party is not drastically impacted and that such party is not put to undue losses. We plan to run a future post

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Ghost Post on IP (Software) Raids: Court Sponsored Extortion?

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In a first of its kind for SpicyIP, we bring you a “ghost-post”, a term that we use to refer to a post by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Interestingly, I met this certain someone (“X”) during my years in active IP practice. We had raided a small firm accused of software piracy and X was the defendant’s counsel. It was perhaps one of the last software piracy raids that I ever did–as it left a bad taste in

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