Off Topic: Course announcement: NUJS Diploma course on Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Law and How it is useful for Law Students

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  Course announcement: NUJS Diploma course on Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Law and How it is useful for Law Students     Law schools or colleges in India do not really focus on teaching practical skills – they rather try to inculcate skills of research, writing and analysis – which are essential, but do not give you all the lawyerly skills you need to provide services to a client. Consider the following:   You read contract law in class. But […]

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Off Topic: Google Policy Fellowship Program: Call for Applications

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  The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship program. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012.   The Google Policy Fellowship offers successful candidates an opportunity to develop research and debate on the fellowship focus areas, which include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom, for a period of about ten weeks starting from August

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Dealing with the cost of cancer treatment in India: Are patents the problem?

/ By / Patent

Image from here Over the last several months, I’ve spent some time visiting some dear family friends who are undergoing treatment at a cancer hospital. This was the first time that I witnessed the disease and its treatment first-hand. Apart from putting life and the law in a new perspective, my occasional visits to the cancer hospital also served the purpose of researching the costs of cancer treatment in India, the manner in which Indians deal with the cost and

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Madras HC clarifies extent of URL blocking

/ By / Copyright

In an update to the seemingly random mass censoring of video and torrent sites about a month ago, an ISP consortium approached the Madras High Court for a clarification as to the extent of the Ashok Kumar interim injunction. According to MediaNama, who have a copy of the order issued on June 15th, 2012, the Madras HC clarified that only specific URLs containing the allegedly infringing content are to be hit by this injunction and not entire websites. This is

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Stepping Down From SpicyIP

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For reasons that are both personal and professional, I will be stepping down from the leadership of SpicyIP, effective today. I will write a longer post about future arrangements soon. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for the wonderful support and encouragement through all these years. I’ve learnt a lot from my interactions with you and I do hope that you will support SpicyIP in its continued fight for transparency and more informed IP policy making

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Tea Board ‘regrets’ earlier RTI reply; discloses legal expenses on registering and defending its Intellectual Property

/ By / Others

Continuing from my earlier post on how the Tea Board & APEDA were making an absolute mockery of the Right to Information Act, 2005, I’m glad to report that the Tea Board has overruled its earlier decision and agreed to disclose its expenses. The Appellate Officer for implementation of the RTI Act, 2005 agreed with my argument that legal expenses of the Board could not be considered confidential and ordered the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) to immediately disclose the

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Courting Legal Talent by Offering Litigation Fellowships

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In a rather provocative post around two years ago on LAOT, I bemoaned the fact that a disproportionately large number of National Law University (NLU) graduates opt for “corporate” careers (defined largely as jobs involving a significant dose of corporate transactional lawyering in some form, either in law firms, companies (in house) or even in LPO’s). And that very few think laterally outside of this “corporate” career box, despite the fact that a law degree (and one from an alleged

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IPAB pulls up Patent Office for improper decisions

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In a recent decision, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (“IPAB”) has criticized the Patent Office for a shoddy decision where the Controller had copy-pasted excerpts from two distinct publications; In one instance even the font, and spacing was the same as used in the original publication.  The original case can be seen here for application number 2254/DELNP/2005. Quotable Quote: “This is not how an order shall be passed by the Patent Office.  The Controller has the duty to examine the claims and test

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The glory of being a copyright lawyer, by the name of Ameet Datta

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Mr. Ameet Dutta Around two weeks ago, on the 30th of May, 2012 I witnessed an incredible sight at the auditorium on the ISKCON premises at Juhu, Mumbai. An auditorium filled with the leading lights of the musical community from Bollywood, led by Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Vishal Bhaaradwaj, Anandji, Shreya Ghosal, Shan, Prasoon Joshi etc. were on their feet to deliver a thundering, heartfelt ovation for a copyright lawyer who had advised Javed Akhtar through the entire process of lobbying

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New patent prevents textbook sharing (in US)

/ By / Copyright, Patent

Anti-piracy device from the good old days While silly patents are nothing new, now and then, there are certain patents that seem to cross certain lines. A new patent granted by the USPTO to economist Joseph Vogel, professor at University of Puerto Rico-Ria Piedras, will restrict textbook sharing amongst students in the guise of attempting to cut down on piracy.  The patent is designed to prevent “unauthorized access to copyrighted academic texts is provided in which trademark licenses, discussion boards,

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