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.

Drug Patent Linkage Controversy: A Middle Path Solution?

/ By / Drug Regulation, Patent

The Mint carried an op-ed of mine on the drug-patent linkage controversy. For a good background to this controversy, please see Prashant’s excellent post here. In this editorial, I’ve opined that linking drug approval to patent status is a bad idea. It delays generic entry and also places a huge burden on the drug controller, who does not have institutional competence to look into complex patent issues. Also, the drug controller cannot frame any rules to mandate such linkage under […]

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Natco vs Pfizer: Joe Mathew Reports on Compulsory Licensing Decision

/ By / Uncategorized

Two days back, we posted on a patent office decision, upholding the patentees’ right to be heard in the Natco vs Pfizer/Roche Compulsory licensing dispute. Joe C Mathew of the Business Standard carries this succinct write up on the decision. I’ve been quoted in this report as stating that: “”I think Natco’s application itself is a weak one as they did not submit proof to suggest that there is a public health emergency in Nepal due to lack of availability

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Mysterious Indian "Bayh Dole" Bill: SpicyIP Procures a Copy

/ By / Uncategorized

In earlier posts, we tracked a “secret” Bayh Dole like bill that was being floated amongst the various Indian ministries. We’ve finally laid our hands on this bill and are pasting it below this post. Also, we intend to port this blog to a website soon and bring you a number of IP documents–so as to make this hub a comprehensive one for all things relating to Indian IP. As many of you may know, this blog is a “voluntary”

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Cipla and Section 3(d): Double Faced Standards?

/ By / Patent

Varun Chhonkar has this great post at Patent Circle, where he highlights two critical Indian patents that Cipla received for a Fosamax derivative (alendronate) and a Nexium derivative (esomeprazole). He questions as to whether the section 3(d) hurdle was as rigorously applied to Cipla, as it is to the various MNC’s, who have, in the recent past, been at the receiving end of this potent section. The Economic Times seems to have picked up in Varun’s post here. Reading the

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Kerala’s IP Policy: Innovative But Deeply Flawed

/ By / Patent

The Indian Express carried an op-ed by me highlighting the fact that although Kerala’s “open source” TK policy is “innovative”, it is deeply flawed. I reproduce the article below: Break with tradition Kerala recently unveiled a rather unconventional ‘traditional knowledge’ policy — set to be one of the few such legislations in the world. Essentially, it seeks to regulate ‘traditional knowledge’ within the state of Kerala — by inter alia providing for some form of ‘property rights’ over this body

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Everything under the "Indian" Sun is Patentable: A Case of Brainwashing?

/ By / Patent

From the comments of a patent examiner speaking at a conference in Delhi recently, it appears that this is indeed the case. Clearly, some of us who thought otherwise need to brush up on our basics of Indian patent law. The Economic Times reports on a patent conference in Delhi recently stating that: “….in yet another step to prove its commitment to entrepreneurial facilitation, Amity Innovation Incubator (AII), organised a day long seminar on “Protecting Intellectual Property Rights,” last week,

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Natco’s Doha CL Application: Patent Office Rules in Favour of Pfizer

/ By / Patent

SpicyIP just learnt that the patent office issued a decision in the Natco “Doha style” compulsory licensing application yesterday. See here for a background to this dispute. In short, the dispute revolves around a “Doha style” compulsory licensing application filed by Natco who argued that in view of a public health problem in Nepal, it ought to be granted a compulsory license to export generic copies of Pfizer’s patented anti cancer drug, Sutent (and Roche’s patented drug, Tarceva) to Nepal.

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Kerala’s IP Policy: A Way out of the Constitutional Conundrum

/ By / Uncategorized

In our last post on this issue, we examined the various constitutional hurdles to Kerala’s proposed IP policy. In short, Kerala may not have “constitutional competence” to enact this legislation, owing to it being a subject matter under the exclusive domain of the Parliament/Central Government. I’ve now reviewed the various lists (Union, State and Concurrent) again and throw up a couple of thoughts on how Kerala may wriggle out of this conundrum. Firstly, the State list (List 2) speaks about

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KERALA’S IP POLICY: CONSTITUTIONAL INFIRMITY?

/ By / Uncategorized

Pursuant to our last post on Kerala’s daring and innovative traditional knowledge policy, we now examine the constitutional implications of such a policy. Mrinalini had rightly highlighted this concern during her last post on this theme. Some of the press notes suggest that Kerala is attempting to get over the constitutional hurdle by insisting that this is more of a “traditional knowledge” (TK) policy–and less of an “IP policy”. If that is indeed the case, SpicyIP cannot fathom as to

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"TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE" IN KERALA : GOD’S OWN "OPEN SOURCE" POLICY?

/ By / Traditional Knowledge

Pursuant to our earlier posts on this issue, SpicyIP has been in touch with Praveen Raj, one of the architects of a recently unveiled IP policy drafted by the State of Kerala. Praveen was kind enough to send us a copy of this policy, as also a short overview that he had prepared. The full policy can now be found here on the Kerala government website. As for Praveen’s overview, we’ve posted it at the end of this post. Kerala

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