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.

Roche Sues CIPLA Over Tarceva Patent

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As predicted, Roche files a suit against CIPLA before the Delhi High Court. In an earlier post, we touched upon this foolhardy “infringement” strategy by CIPLA. CIPLA went around announcing to the press that it was hell bent on infringing the patent. Making such announcements doesn’t leave one with much of leeway when arguing that the patent owner should not be granted a favourable injunction. As one knows, a temporary injunction is a discretionary relief, and the judge looks into […]

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Is Indian Patent Law TRIPS Compliant?

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Daniel Poppy of PharmAsia, a recently launched pharma publication that we blogged about earlier, carries this interesting story on India and TRIPS compliance. I was interviewed for this piece (If you’re interested in the complete text of all the answers that I gave him, please continue reading after the extracts below). I reproduce some extracts from this excellent article below–for a full version, please see here. “PhRMA Vice President, International Affairs, Geralyn Ritter characterizes India’s IP protection as “inadequate and

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FDC Reports Launches PharmAsia

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FDC Reports, the world’s leading information source on the pharma sector has now launched PharmAsiaNews.com, to capture all the exciting pharma news from India, China and Japan. Those have read the “Pink Sheet” will know that FDC Reports is renowned for exceptionally accurate, objective and insightful stories on the pharma sector. With FDC now turning its attention to the exciting pharma developments in India, we (those of us who thirst for this sort of knowledge) are in for a treat.

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Roche vs NATCO: India’s First "Doha Style" Compulsory License?

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Most of you may have heard of the first “Doha” style compulsory license for export of GSK’s ARV drug, TriAvir from Canada to Rwanda. For a great summary of this case, see this ASIL article. Latha Jishnu of the Business Standard reports that a similar request is being made by Natco Pharma, an Indian generic company, to export Roche’s anti cancer drug, Tarceva (Erlotinib) from India to Nepal. The application is for the export of 30,000 tablets to Nepal and

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Roche Patent over AIDS drug in India: Need for Transparency

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At a conference in DC, I heard a speaker (from a reputed MNC pharma company), who was comparing the patent systems of the US and China lament:“In China, we can never enforce a patent. In India, our problem is that we can’t even get the patent in the first place” If a recent report by CH Unni of Livemint is to be believed, this may not always hold true. Unni dug through the USPTO database and found that the Roche

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FICCI Launches IP Newsletter

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Over the last few months, FICCI has been becoming more visible in the IP arena. Perhaps it has something to do with the joining of Akash Taneja (ex NIPO person and noted IP expert) as Executive Director and Sheetal Chopra, as Senior Assistant Director. Their latest offering is a wonderful bimonthly newsletter capturing the latest happenings in the IP world in India. The December issue includes snippets on the Bajaj TVS patent dispute, the Novartis case, the Youtube copyright case

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SpicyIP Jobs: Research Assistance on Pharma Data for LSE Professor

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An exciting research assistant offer from Prof Ken Shadlen of the LSE, who is known for his excellent scholarship on the politics of IP, particularly in relation to generic companies, ARV supplies etc. He wishes to hire a research assistant who can help with collecting data on ARV drug supplies, speciality generics from India etc. If you’re interested, please write to him at [email protected]>. Please send him your resume and contact details as well.

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SpicyIP Tidbits: Will India Become the New Vanguard of the Open Source Movement

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1. Knowledge@Wharton, an excellent online business journal from Wharton business school has this very interesting article on how “open source” may help make Indian software companies more competitive. SpicyIP has in several earlier posts wondered why Indian software companies never really made the transition from “services” to “products”. This article advocates that Indian software companies should gear more towards open source, as these are more “service” oriented. And this may help Indian companies gain a competitive edge. Anyway, for full

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The Bajaj-TVS Patent Dispute: India Plugging Ahead on the Patent Litigation Highway!!

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Just after we reported on the Bilcare litigation, there is news of more sparks flying, as the Bajaj patent dispute (concerning patented spark plugs) makes it to the Supreme Court of India. And more exciting to our pharma afficionados, threat of an imminent suit against CIPLA by Roche over an anticancer drug (as reported in the Mint). We will however report on this Roche -CIPLA duel in our next post. Exciting times ahead!! The number of patent cases seem to

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Bilcare: Patent Office Gives the Delhi High Court the Bird?

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Money control reports that the Controller of Patents recently upheld Bilcare’s Patent in a post grant oppn proceeding. Here is an excerpt: “The Controller of Patents pronounced its decision of dismissing the two oppositions against Bilcare‘s (patent no 197823) on Metallized Packaging Films and uphold the validity of the said patent. The judgment was pronounced after multiple hearings from Mumbai Patent office and the Assistant Controller of Patents stated :”In view of my findings as above after careful consideration of

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