Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

.

New CRI Guidelines Seem to be a Result of Patent Office Overreach

/ By / Patent

Troubling times lie ahead for the Indian IT sector as the recently released Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions seem to have opened the backdoor to software patenting. While the intention of the Patent Office in releasing these Guidelines may have simply been to help foster some clarity and uniformity in patent office practice, the language of the Guidelines paves the way for some unexpected policy changes. Several policy think tanks including iSpirt, Software Freedom Law Centre, Centre for Internet and Society, etc have expressed …

New CRI Guidelines Seem to be a Result of Patent Office Overreach Read More »

Global Innovation Index 2015: Looking at India’s performance

/ By / Innovation

The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2015, released yesterday, saw India ranked a disappointing 81 out of the 141 countries surveyed. Topping the list for the 5th year running is Switzerland, followed by UK and Sweden. The GII, currently in its 8th edition, is an annual report co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Using 79 indicators from over 30 international sources, and with a transparent and replicable computation methodology, it is widely recognized as the …

Global Innovation Index 2015: Looking at India’s performance Read More »

SpicyIP – Call for bloggers!

/ By / Others

2015 marks the completion of ten years since we started out our journey to promote awareness about intellectual property issues in India. These years have been exciting, enriching and have given us the opportunity to learn from all our readers as well as add our bit towards discussing the issues that were of concern to us. To continue this process of collaborative learning, Spicy IP is extremely pleased to announce that we are keen to infuse our team with new blood. …

SpicyIP – Call for bloggers! Read More »

Guest Post: Symed’s Linezolid patent case – A response

/ By / Patent

A couple of weeks ago, Rupali carried a piece on the blog titled “‘Glenmark process’ does not violate Symed’s linezolid patent: DHC“. Shortly after, we received an email from Symed stating that the post did not accurately convey the situation at hand. Both the author and I looked over the post and did not see anything amiss, and went on to make some minor clarificatory edits. At this point, I should admit that though I should have, I did not follow up with …

Guest Post: Symed’s Linezolid patent case – A response Read More »

Breaking News: IPAB SLP Dismissed!

/ By / Others

[Posted on behalf of Prof. Shamnad Basheer, as taken from his email sent out to the SpicyIP subscriber list earlier today]:  In a significant development for Indian IP law, the Supreme Court (a bench consisting of Justices Gogoi and Ramanna) dismissed the government’s appeal in our IPAB PIL matter. With this dismissal, the earlier Madras High Court ruling striking down key provisions of the IPAB as unconstitutional has attained finality. By way of background, I had filed a PIL (public interest …

Breaking News: IPAB SLP Dismissed! Read More »

Guest Post: Safeguarding the Sacredness of Traditional Knowledge – an Argument for a Sui Generis Framework for its Protection

/ By / Traditional Knowledge

With the current debates and discussions going on around Traditional Knowledge (for e.g., see Praveen Raj’s guest post here, or IPKat’s recent post here) we’re happy to bring our readers a sharp guest post by Rahul Bajaj looking into the intricacies of how a sui generis framework for TK could/should work. Rahul Bajaj is a 4th year law student from Nagpur and is passionate about constitutional law, intellectual property law, cyber law and disability law. He is particularly interested in studying the …

Guest Post: Safeguarding the Sacredness of Traditional Knowledge – an Argument for a Sui Generis Framework for its Protection Read More »

Guest Post: gTLD fun .sucks me not

/ By / Others

We’re happy to bring our readers a very interesting guest post by Santosh Vikram Singh on what could turn out to be a huge cyber-squatting issue – it turns out that there is a recently launched gTLD (such as “.com”, or “.org”, etc) which may be uniquely situated to bring together criticism/trolling over any topic, company or person! A fascinating issue which may be especially relevant to big brands and celebrities of all varieties, do read on for more. Santosh is a …

Guest Post: gTLD fun .sucks me not Read More »

US, Switzerland take out WTO gun for India’s Sec 3(d); point at foot

/ By / Patent

In yet another “Indian Pharma Patent Policy” centric international development, an article from LiveMint (view here), reports that India’s Section 3(d) may be facing pressure from a relatively unexplored angle. According to the article, US and Switzerland may be coming up with a creative approach to bring India to the WTO dispute settlement system. Up till now, despite all the pressure by US, India’s pharmaceutical patent provisions had not been challenged at the WTO arena, presumably because any such challenge would be a …

US, Switzerland take out WTO gun for India’s Sec 3(d); point at foot Read More »

Innovation, Progress, Ambition and Censorship

/ By / Innovation, Others, Patent

I recently came across two very interesting articles, the ideas of which our policy makers would do well to keep in mind. The first, a broadly focused piece, titled “Between Innovation and Progress“ is a response by Prof Siva Vaidhyanathan (Univ of Virginia) to the interestingly poised question “Has “innovation” supplanted the idea of progress?“. The second piece, more specific to India, is the opening editorial in the “Science in India” special issue of the highly respected “Nature” science journal, titled …

Innovation, Progress, Ambition and Censorship Read More »

I-MAK takes on Sovaldi patents around the world

/ By / Drug Regulation, Patent

The Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), along with various other local organizations, has launched challenges on Gilead’s patent applications for it’s Hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) in 5 countries – Argentina, Brazil, China, Russia and Ukraine. These 5 countries together account for about 30%-40% of the Hepatitis C patients in the world (about 40 – 60 million out of an estimated 150 million to 185 million patients across the world). However, for reasons best known to Gilead, these 5 countries …

I-MAK takes on Sovaldi patents around the world Read More »

Scroll to Top