A Layman’s Narrative of Patents, TK and Biopiracy

/ By / Patent

As many of you may know, SpicyIP has been around for about 5 years now (since 2005). Since then, we’ve mainly conveyed the latest in Indian IP through the medium of “text”. Often times, we’ve used “images” too. However, we’ve fallen short on the video (and youtube) count. All that is set to change. We bring you our first video, albeit an amateurish and rather badly shot one (from my digital camera). What amazed me was the fact that a […]

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Off Topic: IDIA and Legal Reasoning Competition

/ By / Uncategorized

For those of you blessed with the talent to craft clever questions on legal reasoning, there’s a competition being run by the IDIA project. IDIA (Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education) seeks to enhance access to legal education by training kids from underprivileged backgrounds for the law entrance examination (CLAT). The hope is that with intensive CLAT (and English) training, some of these children might make it to the premier law schools in India and have a shot

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SpicyIP Tidbit: CGPDTM Releases a List of ‘Scientific Advisors’

/ By / Patent

The Controller General of Patents has released a list of ‘Scientific Advisors’ who can advise Courts on the scientific and technical aspects of patent litigation. Courts have the power to appoint such advisors under Section 115 of the Patents Act, 1970. The Controller General had published a notice inviting applications for these positions on 10 September, 2009. The notice and application for the same can be accessed over here and here. Applications were sought in four classes of advisors, with

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Issuing "Radio" Compulsory Licences in the Wake of a "Mirchi" Controversy

/ By / Copyright

As expected, a writ petition has been filed challenging the legality of the appointment of the current chairman of the Copyright Board, Raghbir Singh. This came up before Justice Sikri of the Delhi High Court yesterday and notices have been issued. We’ve been dealing with this controversial appointment in several earlier blog posts. In one of these posts, I had questioned his eligibility on the ground that he was 66 years old at the time of his appointment and therefore

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SpicyIP Tidbit: WSJ criticizes DCGI report on spurious drugs in India

/ By / Uncategorized

The Wall Street Journal in its Sept 3rd edition carried an article by Dr. Roger Bate criticizing an exhaustive report on spurious drugs in India that was prepared jointly by the office of the Drug Controller Of India and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). This report which can be accessed over here was released late last year and was one of the most comprehensive reports on the prevalence of spurious drugs in India. (Please click here to access a well

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Off-Topic: Research- What Does It Demand?

/ By / Innovation

In the last post, I had penned a few rudimentary non-novel obvious thoughts on what it takes to nurture a culture of innovation based on Prof.Vijay Govindarajan’s (VG) work. In this post, I intend to delve deeper into one of VG’s recurring themes (“leitmotifs”) – absence of fear of failure. I had an interesting experience which I wish to draw from, to articulate better on this point.  (Disclaimer: This post could be slightly off-topic, with an extended introduction (“bhoomika”, if

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Innovation- It’s All In The Mind

/ By / Innovation

There’s this series of videos of Harvard Business Publishing on YouTube I came across recently, a good number of which are dedicated to the theme of innovation. One of them, which I found to be of relevance to markets like India is a short interview of Prof.Vijay Govindarajan, Earl C. Daum Professor of International Business at Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth College). (To know more about Prof.VG, as he is popularly known, visit here and his blog) In this video,

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WSJ mixing up issues in Access to Drugs debate?

/ By / Patent

Recently our friends over at Afro-IP brought to light an article by Alec van Gelder in the WSJ on the problem of access to medicines in Africa. While the article is specific to the problems in Africa, its points about lack of infrastructure and diversion of money being major barriers to access are true across almost all developing countries. [Unfortunately the article is only fully available to subscribers.] The article goes on to state that Big Pharma has been made

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Bappi Lahiri & Bad Faith Litigation

/ By / Copyright

This post will cover the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit against an attorney representing Bappi Lahiri, for a bad faith and frivolous copyright infringement claim. Anthony Kornarens, a copyright lawyer based out of the United States, represented Bappi Lahiri, in a suit for copyright infringement and his conduct during the course of the suit formed the subject-matter of this case. The Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the district court, severely sanctioning the attorney

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Open Source: Who and How Do I Hold Responsible/Liable?

/ By / Uncategorized

Yesterday was an interesting day, interesting because the day threw up a lot of questions, the answers to which I am not sure of (which would mean I have something that resembles an answer), but the very questions have pointed me to another rich area of (potential?) research. I am pretty sure mine may not be the first head in which these questions have popped, yet that doesn’t stop me from relishing the questions or the fact that these questions

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