Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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India shoots unilateral USTR action down; Looks towards bilateral talks

/ By / Others

In a very welcome and quick response to USTR’s Special 301 Out of Cycle Review (OCR) process for India that opened for comments a couple of days ago (October 14th), the Government of India has told the American authorities that they will not be cooperating with this unilateral process, writes Nayanima Basu in the Business Standard. Pointing to the lack of any obligation to participate in the unilaterally held Special 301 process, Indian authorities have said that they would engage US […]

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India-US IP working groups insufficient for USTR – Continuing with unilateral OCR as well

/ By / Others

According to the US Federal Register, it appears the US Trade Representative will proceed with an Out of Cycle Review (OCR) for India to unilaterally ‘grade’ India’s IPR regime as they had announced earlier this year. This throws up two quick points that need mentioning/repeating: 1. The USTR Special 301 annual process is a degrading political pressure mechanism with no credibility.  The above link states: “… in order to assess progress on engagement with the Government of India on intellectual property rights

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Tango Trademark Trouble

/ By / Trademark

We’re happy to bring our readers a note on a recent Bombay High court order, by Shashank Mangal and Kamlesh Mali, students from ILS Law College, Pune. I must state up front that though they had sent this to me almost immediately after the order had been passed, there was a long delay on my part in posting it. Without further ado: Interpretation of S.17 and S.30 (1) (a) of the Trade Mark Act, 1999 with reference to a recent

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Guest Post: “India’s misguided response to our findings on the quality of drug exports”

/ By / Drug Regulation, Others

We recently wrote a two part piece on an NBER paper that has been garnering quite a bit of attention for two reasons. First, because the authors conclude that India’s pharmaceutical companies may be discriminating against African nations in their exports; and secondly, because the Indian government has indicated they may file a defamation action against the authors for this paper. In covering these developments, first I presented some of my critiques of the paper; and then, Gautam Bhatia wrote

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New Online IPR/Media/Tech Resources – For Students, Teachers and Researchers

/ By / Others

We’ve recently come across some wonderful new resources that our readers may be interested in. As it’s often difficult to know what information is available where, and since it would be a shame if these wonderful new resources went undiscovered, I thought I’d list out some of those that have caught my eye over the last few months. I’ve tried to focus on resources that are ‘open’, relatively new, and that would be useful for students, teachers and researchers in

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Trouble Brewing around NBER Paper on Indian Pharma – Part II

/ By / Others, Patent

Yesterday, I wrote about the big storm brewing around an NBER paper which claimed that the Indian pharma industry was intentionally sending lower quality drugs to African countries. In response to this paper, it appears the Government of India may be launching legal proceedings. In yesterday’s post, I discussed the paper itself – concluding that the paper in its current state was not quite convincing in its own conclusions. [The lead author has responded to a few points in the comments

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Trouble Brewing around NBER Paper on Indian Pharma – Part I

/ By / Patent

We’ve recently been informed of two events, one flowing from the other, both of which I would term as very disturbing in their own way. First, is this NBER Working Paper that concludes that it is likely that Indian pharmaceutical firms differentiate drug quality based on destination of consumption, to the detriment of African countries. Secondly, is the follow up development that the Indian government may be taking legal action against the authors of the above paper. Needless to say – both

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Cancer drug price is NOT going from Rs 8000 to Rs 1.08lakhs!

/ By / Patent

There seems to be a lot of mis-information around the latest supposed “cap” on National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA)’s powers. I thought I would try to clear some of this up. 1. Why exactly is the NPPA’s power being reduced? It’s technically not being reduced. It’s being clarified. As Madhulika pointed out in our post on the topic: The government noted that the NPPA was stepping beyond its given powers by interpreting “extraordinary circumstances … in public interest” in a

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Ladas Memorial Award Competition – for Students as well as Professionals

/ By / Trademark

We’re happy to bring to our readers’ notice, INTA’s Ladas Memorial Award Competition for papers on trademark law or matters that directly relate to or affect trademarks. The competition has a student category (open to non-US students as well) carrying a prize of $2500 dollar, and a professional category carrying a set of Stephen P. Ladas’ three volume treatise Patents, Trademarks, and Related Rights. Winning papers will also be published in INTA’s legal journal, The Trademark Reporter. See more details below: Submit your

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An examination of FRAND Challenges for India’s ICT Sector

/ By / Patent, Publication

SpicyIP is happy to announce that we will be starting off our very own ‘journal’ section soon! Rather than a periodical, we will (probably) be accepting and publishing entries year round. We are still finalizing details for this and will announce them in the near future – so do keep an eye out! Further, in addition to this, we have decided to publish some longer form notes sent in by our readers in a “SpicyIP Discussion Paper Series” that is being

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