Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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IP Scholarship in Education

/ By / Uncategorized

Eleven years ago, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago allowed a small group of IP scholars to get together and discuss their works in progress. This became an annual IP Scholars Conference (IPSC) with the number of participants increasing exponentially, and co-sponsored by the IP centers at Berkeley Law School, Cardozo School of Law and the Stanford Law School. The latest edition was held on August 11-12 in Chicago. The conference had 137 presenters including many of the top IP scholars in

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MPP faces licensing issues

/ By / Patent

Image from Woody1778a We had earlier mentioned that the Medicines Patent Pool had gotten into an agreement with it’s first pharmaceutical company. However, it appears that there are certain problems with the licensing agreement, the interpretation and understanding of which is under dispute by two traditional heavyweights in this field. I-Mak released a briefing paper on the Implications of the MPP and Gilead licenses on Access to Treatment which addressed certain concerns that they had with the license; and Knowledge Ecology

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Fighting Piracy with Oppression?

/ By / Copyright

Screenshot taken from TorrentFreak A frantic call from a friend last night informed me of a rather strange message on their screen. “This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DoT)”. The site my friend was trying to access was Megaupload.com – an online storage site. A quick google inquiry brought up similar concerns being voiced by other internet users on internet forums. I, myself, however, was able to access the site with no problems. From

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Gilead dips its toes into Patent Pool

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Earlier this year, we had carried a post on UNITAID’s Medicines Patent Pool being in talks with several key pharmaceutical companies. In a press release by the Medicines Patent Pool today, they announced an agreement with Gilead Sciences, which makes them the first pharmaceutical company to join the MPP. Gilead also announced that they had already established license agreements with 4 India based drug manufacturers – Hetero Drugs Ltd., Matrix Laboratories Ltd., Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and Strides Arcolab Ltd Patent Pools

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India ranks low on Innovation index

/ By / Innovation

Image taken from here The ‘decade of innovation‘ 2011-2020, seems to have not taken off on a great start if the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2011 edition is anything to go by. The GII ranked India 62nd out of 125 economies measured for innovation levels, marking a continual decline since the Index started in 2009 – India was 56 in 2010, and 41 in 2009. Switzerland topped this year’s list followed by Sweden and Singapore, while China was the highest ‘lower-middle’

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Internet Access is a Human Right declares UN Report!

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The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, put forward a report to the UN Human Rights Council stating that internet access is a human right. Several current issues are addressed in the report. Emphasising the growing importance of internet in today’s society, the Special Rapporteur writes:  “Unlike any other medium, the Internet enables individuals to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds  instantaneously and

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Patents do not hinder Access?

/ By / Patent

Recently, Mr. Ranjit Shahani, the president of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) and vice chairman and managing director of Novartis India, gave an interview to the Financial Express regarding the importance of patents to the pharmaceutical industry and its effects on access to medicines. I’d like to take this chance to react to his statements. I’ll be extracting certain excerpts but the full interview is available here (and it’s a quick read). Disclaimer: I’ll be focusing on the parts

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Anand Sharma gives a No to Data Exclusivity

/ By / Data Exclusivity

Picture Credit: Kevin Dean from http://www.betaart.com As we’ve highlighted several times on this blog, the pharmaceutical lobby in EU and US have (through their governments) tried to push India into accepting many stronger IP rights, including data exclusivity. As we’ve also highlighted several times, data exclusivity has been consistently been opposed by the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance as well as several NGOs; however we haven’t been as sure as to what position the government was going to take in the EU-India

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Google test pilots its Innovation Incubator program in SA

/ By / Innovation

While Google may be facing criticism for trying to take too much power into their own hands with respect to their digitalisation of orphan works (see Amlan’s upcoming post for more on this), I doubt they will face any such opposition in their efforts to empower others by fostering innovation in Africa. Google has launched Umbono (Zulu for “idea/vision”) , a technological innovation incubator at Cape Town, South Africa. In a  statement from Google, they say: “For six months, teams will enjoy free office

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Informing the pharma innovation debate: Harmonised IP standards and its effects

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Image from here  [Since this is a more theoretical post, in the interests of our readers, I’m stating at the outset that this piece is essentially regarding policy questions that ought to arise while considering global drug innovation policies, either patents or otherwise. For the purposes of this post, I’m keeping the “access to medicines and drug innovation policy” debate as the context, and for purposes of convenience I am broadly dividing the parties in this debate into two sides

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