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.

NANDO’S Vs NANDU: SPICY TRADEMARK ISSUE

/ By / Trademark

A note on a recent trademark case from a guest blogger, Akshat Pande, an IP practitioner from Delhi. The note pertains to a famous UK chain, “Nando’s”, that serves absolutely delectable chicken, –better, some would say, than “finger licking wares” dished out by the good ole’ Colonel. Though registered as an Irish company, it’s really Portugese cuisine with some significant South African roots. Anyway, here goes: “I was desperately waiting for Nando’s to open up in India as I have […]

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IP AND INNOVATION: MAKING TRIPS WORK FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

/ By / Innovation

As a follow up to my earlier post on TRIPS and how best to use “IP” strategically to enhance technological development for developing countries, here is a post on a blog titled “Unheard Voices” dealing with issues in Bangladesh. Intellectual Property Rights: Making Them Work For Us Posted by Amer under Foreign Matters , South Asia “This is a somewhat dated issue, but I recently came across this wonderfully well document example by Abul Kalam Azad of how the WTO

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PATENTING PHARMA SUBSTANCES: INDIA AND TRIPS

/ By / Uncategorized

I came across this very incisive piece on pharma patents, TRIPS and India by Prabir Purkayastha in People’s Democracy, a publication of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).. An engineer and a science activist, Prabir is one of the founding members of Delhi Science Forum. Whilst I agree with most of what Prabir states, I have a slight reservation with the highly contentious NCE (New Chemical Entity) vs Salt form distinction and the notion that we can somehow exclude all

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Novartis’ objection to Chandrasekharan dimissed by IPAB

/ By / Uncategorized

Pursuant to my earlier postings on this issue, the IPAB has dismissed Novartis’s objection to the presence of Chandrasekharan as a technical member on the IPAB panel. As many of us expect, this decision is likely to be appealed–and apart from more biiling hours to lawyers involved in this highly politicized case, the delay will do no one any good!! I haven’t seen the IPAB order yet–but it does seem like Novartis has a good case in trying to get

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iPhone and Antitrust Implications: US vs EU vs India

/ By / Competition Law, Innovation

To continue our fascination with the iPhone (see Aysha’s earlier post), I picked up an interesting news item pertaining to the antitrust implications of Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&A (Cingular). If this issue cropped up in Europe, I could bet a thousand horses that the EC Commission will be far more likely to clamp down on the deal and hold that the “exclusivity” agreement between Apple and AT&T violates EU competition law norms. The EC is much more intrusive than

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COPYRIGHT OVER FILM TITLES?

/ By / Copyright, Trademark

An excellent summary of a recent decision dealing with copyrights over film titles from Manisha Singh, Partner at Lex Orbis, one of the prominent IP law firms from India (as extracted from an IBA newsletter). The decision seems a sound one–as I can’t imagine a court protecting a mere new title as a “literary work” or as operating as a trademark (particularly when it is a new film that hasn’t been advertised for long or is not part of a

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JC BOSE, WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY AND PATENTS

/ By / Patent

I’d blogged earlier on India’s contributions to mathematics. As some of us are aware, it wasn’t just in mathematics, but in several other areas of technology that Indian accomplishments are overlooked in standard text books and literature. In fact, in ancient India, scientific breakthroughs range from references to astronomy in the Rig Veda to Shushruta’s trysts with plastic surgery. This note captures Shushruta’s brilliance: “The practice of surgery has been recorded in India around 800 B.C. This need not come

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Ancient India and Maths

/ By / Uncategorized

Something that we in India already knew about. Naomi Canton from the Hindustan Times writes: “Indians’ contribution to the development of mathematics has largely been swept under the carpet in global history books. But a BBC crew, led by an Oxford professor, was in the country last week to film a documentary revealing Indians created some of the most fundamental mathematical theories. The West has always believed that Sir Isaac Newton, famous for developing the laws of gravity and motion,

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"CHEMICAL" OBVIOUSNESS: HAL WEGNER’S NOTE

/ By / Patent

I’d referred to Hal Wegner’s note on chemical obviousness in the last post. For those interested, the Patent Prospector provides an excellent summary of this note and also links to the note. The summary is as below: Hal Wegner has analyzed the current status of case law regarding chemical compound obviousness, and holds that “KSR and Pfizer v. Apotex manifest fundamental misunderstandings of chemical practice case law.” Selective excerpts from the summary of this exceptional research and analysis:The law of

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TRAINING PATENT EXAMINERS

/ By / Patent

For those of you interested in spending a good Sunday pondering what the training program of a typical US examiner looks like, here’s a wonderful blog that is interestingly titled “Patently Academic: The Saga of a Patent Examiner in the Patent Training Academy”. For a delicious sampler, see below: “Anyway, back to search strategies. I’m pretty impressed by the wide array of search tools available to examiners now, and somewhat amazed about how difficult things must’ve been even a few

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