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.

Informal IP: From the Green Revolution to the Neem Revolution

/ By / Innovation

The Hindu recently ran an interview of mine on Indian IP and Innovation Policy. I argued that India needs the following: I. Holistic IP and Innovation Policy India needs to have a more holistic approach to innovation policy than the piecemeal approach thus far (mainly centering around specific IP legislations and often forgetting that IP is but a tool to incentivise innovaiton/creativity and not an end in itself). II. Towards “Informal IP” We need to stop framing our debates only […]

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Joff Wild on the Allegations Against Indian Patent Office

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The inimitable Joff Wild has a very pointed review of the Mint article that exposed high level corruption at the Indian patent office. Before I review Joff’s take on this rather unfortunate state of affairs at the patent office, let me thank all our readers for their comments to Kruttika’s hard hitting post on this issue. Some of the comments made for very interesting reading! Kruttika is now working on a post that will highlight the key aspects of a

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Introducing Suchita Saigal as our New Blogger

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We’re happy to welcome Suchita Saigal, a fifth year law student from NLSIU, Bangalore. For a law student, she’s garnered up an impeccable IP record, having taught IP as a teaching assistant to Prof.Ramakrishna, the head of the IP Dept at NLS. She’s also done a few IP related internships, most recently in Herbert Smith’s (London) IP practice department. She’s currently heading a research group working on Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Protecting Traditional Knowledge. She is a current

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Expanding the SpicyIP Family: Introducing Mihir Naniwadekar

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I have great pleasure in inviting Mihir Naniwadekar to join our blog. He is a 4th year B.A.LL.B. student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He is a seasoned blogger and has been contributing to the Corporate Law Blog, the leading Indian corproate law blog. He is also the founder of the “Law and Legal Developments” blog. In his first post on SpicyIP, Mihir plans to cover a rather bold report from the “Innovation Partnership”, an international

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Breaking News: India Unveils "National Innovation Act"

/ By / Innovation

Pursuant to our earlier post on an impending Innovation Act, the government has now released a draft version of the National Innovation Act, 2008 (hereafter “NIA”). The preamble to the Act explains its purpose: “An Act to facilitate public, private or public- private partnership initiatives for building an Innovation support system to encourage Innovation, evolve a National Integrated Science and Technology Plan and codify and consolidate the law of confidentiality in aid of protecting Confidential Information, trade secrets and Innovation.

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Guest Post: Recent Developments in the "Arogyapacha: Kani" Case

/ By / Patent

We bring you a guest post from Rohan Saha, a final year student at the Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, on some recent developments in the Arogyapacha case, as reported in this Tehelka article here. On behalf of SpicyIP, Rohan also spoke with Dr Pushpangadan (ex TGBRI member who was the key person who drew up the benefit sharing proposal involving the Kanis: a proposal that has been lauded by international bodies such as the UN, World Bank etc) .

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Guest Post: APEDA empowered to register Basmati as a GI

/ By / Uncategorized

We bring you a guest post from Danish Sheikh, a law student from the Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, on a recent development involving Basmati, one of India’s most reputed geographical indications (yet to be registered in India though). APEDA empowered to register Basmati as a GI The Agriculture and Processed Food Products Exports Promotion Agency (APEDA) has been empowered by the government to register and protect intellectual property rights or similar rights including Geographical Indications (GI) for certain special

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Guest Post: Delhi High Court Injects "Transparency" into the Indian Patent Office

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SpicyIP brings you a guest post from Shwetasree Majumder, who is a partner with Fidus Law Chambers. During her tenure as partner at Anand and Anand, Shwetasree was lead counsel in a case that exposed a well entrenched but somewhat unjust practice at the patent office, where the office would deem patent applications as ” abandoned” under section 21, in order to avoid having to give reasons for rejecting the said applications (under section 15). Justice Gita Mittal of the

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Breaking News: Natco Withdraws "Doha" Compulsory Licence Application

/ By / Patent

SpicyIP has reason to believe that the Natco compulsory licensing application in respect of Roche’s “Tarceva” and Pfizer’s “Sutent” has been withdrawn. Apparently, Natco sent a letter to the patent office, requesting that its application be treated as withdrawn. We’ll confirm this news soon. Natco’s decision to withdraw may have stemmed from a fear that it would lose on merits. For our earlier posts on India’s first “Doha” compulsory licensing application, see here. In short, the dispute revolves around a

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Breaking News: Roche Sues Cipla Again

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Pursuant to our last post (quoting from a BS report by Joe C Mathew), we’ve learnt that Roche has filed a law suit against Cipla for both patent and trademark infringement in the Bombay High Court. The drug in question is an anti-infective (Valgancyclovir, sold as “Valcyte” by Roche), that is used by patients undergoing organ transplants, as also HIV patients. The details of the Roche patent covering this drug are as below: i) Indian patent number is 207232 (Chennai),

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