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.

Creating ‘Informal’ IP Norms

/ By / Copyright, Innovation, Patent

In an earlier post, I touched on something called “Informal IP Norms”. I have attempted to flesh this out a bit more in this Mint editorial. Much more needs to be done in this regard– and this is just a tentative thought. As always, I greatly welcome your comments/insights/critiques on this theme. (Image from here) Creating ‘Informal’ IP NormsCurrent intellectual property (IP) regimes are excessively formalistic in their orientation. Not too surprising, given that their creation and sustenance has largely […]

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Merry Christmas from SpicyIP: Some Thoughts on the "Grinch"

/ By / Copyright

Dear Readers, Here’s wishing you a merry Christmas and a fabulous New Year ahead. We’ll be bringing you some additional features in the New Year–so please stay tuned. And in the meantime, here’s a story that connects up IP and Christmas, and one that I picked up from Manon Ress’s posting on the wonderful A2k (Access to knowledge) listserve hosted by KEI. Of course, the writer misses some of the finer nuances in our exotic IP jurisprudence—for e.g., the domain

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PPL and X’mas Collections: Transparency and the Right to Information

/ By / Copyright

Tis’ Christmas time– the time for the Santas of copyright law to come riding on “non transparent” sleighs and to knock on the doors of unsuspecting hotels and bar owners. Not with gifts, but with threats of law suits. Yes, dear readers: tis PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) that I speak of. The very same entity, whose non transparent and high handed functioning resulted in an earlier guest post. And why do I mention them again today? Its not that I

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IP Think Tank Podcast Discussing Indian Bayh Dole

/ By / Innovation

Duncan Bucknell of the IP thinktank put together this weeks’ IP podcast, involving himself, Jeremy Philips and me. We start out by discussing the notoroius and secretive progress of India’s Bayh Dole style legislation. I then take issue with Jeremy’s use of the words “pro IP” and “anti IP”, arguing that we’ve come a long way since this sort of rhetoric: we ought to now speak in terms of “pro innovation” and “pro creativity”. Jeremy rightly points out that no

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Branding the "Himalayas": Descriptive, Generic or a GI?

/ By / Trademark

We bring you a guest post from an IP practitioner, V.C Mathews, who works with RK Dewan & Co in Mumbai and is a graduate of Symbiosis Society’s Law College, Pune. His post deals with a trademark issue involving the use of the term “Himalayan” for packaged mineral water. He opines that since the term “Himalayan” is a descriptive term, it could potentially acquire distinctiveness and is therefore capable of trademark protection. Apart from the issue of whether the plaintiff

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Indian Bayh Dole Finally Goes Public: Access to Innovation?

/ By / Uncategorized

PRS, an independent research initiative that aims to strengthen the legislative debate by making it better informed, more transparent and participatory, has published the final version of the Indian “Bayh Dole” bill that was introduced in the Rajya Sabha yesterday. PRS is the brainchild of a visionary, CV Madhukar, who happens to be an Echoing Green Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow. For our previous posts on this controversial bill, please see here. In particular, compare this with the original version

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Guest Post: "Policy" Space in TRIPS

/ By / Uncategorized

We have a guest post today from a very special guest, Dr Henning Grosse Ruse – Khan. Listed below is his brief bio: After joining the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich (Germany) in autumn 2007, Henning Grosse Ruse – Khan has focussed on new approaches for balancing private rights and public interests in international economic law, in particular intellectual property protection. Previously Henning worked as a Lecturer in International Trade Law at the

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Indian Bayh Dole Bill Introduced in Parliament

/ By / Uncategorized

The Indian Bayh Dole bill (technically called “Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008”) was introduced in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Parliament) today. SpicyIP will soon bring you a copy of this Bill, as introduced. The Department of Science and Technology is yet to put up a copy of this bill on its website. This bill will, in all likelihood, be submitted to a Parliamentary standing committee, tasked with a careful scrutiny of the bill.

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In-Transit Pharma Consigments, IP Forum Proliferation and the WHO

/ By / Patent, Trademark

A very well researched story from Lison Joseph of the Mint, which I reproduce in full below (critical portions of the piece have been marked in bold). In my interview to the Mint for this story, I stated that the “in-transit” seizures of Indian consignments (of Pharmexcil member companies) in the EU appear to implicate “patent” rights of EU patent owners. And have nothing to do with trademark issues (since the exports were unbranded API’s) or counterfeiting (as traditionally understood)

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Section 3(d) Scrutiny: Indian Patent Database will be Ready by March 2009

/ By / Uncategorized

CH Unnikrishnan, a well known pharma/patent reporter with the Mint ran a very interesting story a couple of days back on the likely section 3(d) scrutiny at the patent office. He states: “India may have denied a patent to Swiss drug maker Novartis AG for its cancer drug Glivec because it considered this to be a mere modification of an existing molecule, but it has granted at least 10 patents in the past 12 months to foreign and local drug

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