Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

.

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 »

“King Copyright” has no place in a Democracy

/ By / Copyright

A few weeks ago, the Centre for Internet and Society and the Observer Research Foundation organized a conference focusing on “Freedom of Expression in a Digital Age” in association with the Internet Policy Observatory of the Center for Global Communication Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. For their panel on “Balancing Freedom of Expression and other digital rights”, I was invited to discuss Copyrights in this context. While I wasn’t able to make it to the Conference, I did send in a

“King Copyright” has no place in a Democracy Read More »

National IPR Policy – Who Makes it in India?!

/ By / Innovation, Others, Overlaps in IP, Patent

[Long post ahead. But it mostly consists of a timeline of events regarding formation of / comments on Indian IP policy over the last 9 months – a timeline that paints a very worrying picture!]. [Editor’s note: Minor additions have been made to the timeline based on comments received – 6/5/2015] Last week, in an email Shamnad sent to our subscribers, as well as in my post “Modi shames India, calls patent laws under-developed“, we noted how Modi’s referral to

National IPR Policy – Who Makes it in India?! Read More »

Modi shames India, calls patent laws under-developed

/ By / Innovation, Patent

In a stark volte-face from decades of where the Indian government has stood on its patent laws, the Indian Prime Minister recently issued some worrying lines, with very worrisome public-health implications. As per Business Standard, “Though he spoke in Hindi, what he said was to the effect that “India must also work on intellectual property rights guidelines to match global standards.“” LiveMint reports further – that while speaking at the Commerce Ministry’s first Global Exhibition on Services, Modi said,  “If we don’t work towards bringing our

Modi shames India, calls patent laws under-developed Read More »

Faith (in IP) be damned! (But Happy World IP Day!)

/ By / Innovation, Others, Privacy

Thanks to the social media turn of more and more academics, I recently came across a new essay by Prof Mark Lemley, one of the most prolific IP personalities around today, focusing specifically on an issue we’ve noted as problematic for years on the blog now – the conflict between “Faith” and “Fact” based IP. From World IP Day in 2008 (“Faith based IP to Fact based IP“), to a post just a couple of months ago (“Dodgy IP Dogma“) –

Faith (in IP) be damned! (But Happy World IP Day!) Read More »

Scroll to Top