Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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Event Report of the Inaugural SpicyIP Summer School!

/ By / Copyright, Drug Regulation, Event, Patent, Trade Secret, Trademark

Last month saw SpicyIP converting a long-standing idea into reality, with the successful completion of the 2025 SpicyIP Summer School! An idea that had first been mooted maybe a decade or so ago by Shamnad, it was something that we had just not been able to get to for various reasons. This year too, as we moved close to March, we had almost given up on trying for it this year. But fortunately, a conversation with Dr Zakir Thomas took […]

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Image of the flowchart showing the various technical tests used in interpreting S.3(k). Accessible version within the post below.

The State of CRI Jurisprudence in India – “Technically” All Over the Place

/ By / Patent

Some years ago, I had traced out two decades of the ‘confusingly confounding’ regulation of software patents in India. The “ping-ponging” journey traced in that post seems to have been a precursor for the judicial fragmentation that Section 3(k)’s interpretation would soon see. Last week, as a few of us (Bharathwaj Ramakrishnan, Yogesh Byadwal, Anushka Dhankar and myself) were putting together comments for the 2025 Draft Computer Related Inventions (CRI) Guidelines and after some grueling work going through as many

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Book Review: Overlapping Intellectual Property Rights 2nd Edition

/ By / Overlaps in IP

We’re very happy to bring to our readers a review of one of the last (to reach completion, at least) pieces of work that our founder, Prof Basheer had been working on prior to his passing. Started in 2018, the 2nd edition of Overlapping IP Rights (OUP) was brought to completion in 2023 by his co-editor, the inimitable Prof Neil Wilkof, along with Prof Irene Calboli who came on as a co-editor following Prof Basheer’s demise. The book, a follow

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A Patent System’s Job is to Incentivize More Innovation, Not Merely More Patents: Looking at the New Patent (Amendment) Rules- Part II

/ By / Patent

[This post is co-authored with Praharsh.] In part I of the post we discussed the implication of the new patent amendment Rules on the obligation to file working statements and information on corresponding foreign applications to the Indian patent applications. In this part we shall discuss the implications of the Rules on Pre-grant Opposition mechanism.  Pre-grant Oppositions On the issue of pre-grant oppositions, it is to be noted and appreciated that the published rules have taken into consideration some of

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A Patent System’s Job is to Incentivize More Innovation, Not Merely More Patents: Looking at the New Patent (Amendment) Rules- Part I

/ By / Patent

[This post is co-authored with Praharsh.] Last week, the DPIIT published amendments to the Patent Rules, 2003, bringing changes to amongst other things, some important patent policy levers like working statement requirements, disclosure about corresponding foreign applications, pre-grant oppositions, etc. While there has been much vocal praise over the Rules in general, there has been surprisingly very little nuanced or analytical discussion of what these changes mean to the Indian Patent Eco-system as a whole (which includes more than just

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Indian Patent Office Puts out 1532 Orders in One Day!

/ By / Patent

How many Controller decisions are given in one day? Following a curious post by Sandeep Rathod on LinkedIn noting that a whopping 1500+ patent decisions, perhaps the largest ever in a single day, were put out yesterday, we took a quick look at the information available to see for ourselves. It looks like there’s been a large increase in the number of decisions being put out every day! For comparison, we took the first 15 days of this month (March

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Bayh Dole-esque Guidelines Notified by Dept of Biotechnology

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Earlier this month the Dept of Biotechnology notified the “DBT Intellectual Property Guidelines 2023“ (PDF) which they say ‘provide for ownership, transfer/commercializing of IP arising from DBT funded research outcomes”. The notification says that the Guidelines shall be applicable to all DBT funded extra-mural and intra-mural research organisations. (It’s unclear where the mandate is coming from, as guidelines generally do not have the power of law behind them but are merely discretionary / advisory). It also provides 2 links where

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Draft Patent Amendment Rules – Increasing Efficiency of Granting Patent Monopolies While Forgetting the Reason for Allowing Them in the First Place

/ By / Patent

[This post has been co-authored with Praharsh Gour. We’re also thankful to Tejaswini Kaushal and Varsha Sharma for their research assistance with this post. Tejaswini is a 3rd-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow. Varsha is a 5th year law student pursuing B. A. LL.B (Hons.) from Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat.] Almost two years after the 2021 amendments to the Patent Rules 2003, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has proposed a

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Searching for Indian IP History

/ By / Copyright

While the Indian IP landscape continues to grow at a breakneck speed, it’s “interesting” to see how little of any discussion is rooted in facts and figures. Indeed, the ‘fact vs faith’ approach is something that Prof Basheer had written about several times in the past (eg here and here). As I’ve noted in the past, this is not limited to India, however, there’s a peculiar problem for those who want to pursue more ‘fact-based’ research on IP in India

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Announcing the SpicyIP Empirical Scholarship Database Series!

/ By / Copyright, Patent, Publication

Moving from Faith-based positions to Fact-based positions has been a topic that Prof Shamnad Basheer had long been propounding on this blog, with several prominent examples such as the petition to the Government to make Indian patent information available online more than 15 years ago, to displaying glaring gaps in Form 27 declarations, from the “Indian Bayh Dole” issues, to countering claims about textbook prices, and more. Indeed, this commitment to fostering accountability and transparency in the Indian IP eco-system

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