India IP and Innovation Forum

India IP and Innovation Forum

www.managingip.com/IndiaIP2012
Regency Hyatt Hotel, New Delhi

February 28, 2012

Free for IP counsel, academics and R&D professionals

Dear Colleague:

Managing IP and Law Wire Blog invite you to the inaugural India IP & Innovation Forum on February 28, 2012 in New Delhi.

The forum provides the best platform for IP counsel, their advisers and leading officials to meet and debate the latest legal issues and practical strategies for IP owners in India, from patent prosecution to portfolio management strategies.

Easy ways to register

Visit www.managingip.com/IndiaIP2012
Email mfabri@euromoneyplc.com
Call +852 2842 6995

Agenda topics:

· Patent prosecution tips

· Defending your copy right

· US focus – recent patent reform and implications for Indian IP owners

· The Indian Patent Act and software patentability

· Litigation in life sciences – lessons learnt from recent cases

· Trade mark protection in India

· Portfolio management strategies

Speakers include:

Viswanathan Seshan, head of IP&S India, Philips Electronics India

Keshav Dhakad, director, IPR & license compliance, Microsoft India

Anshuman Sharma, country general & legal head, Novartis

R Parthasarathy, partner, Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan

Rajiv Chauhan, VP and general counsel, Pernod Ricard

Aravind Chinchure, assistant vice president, Reliance Industries Ltd

V Lakshmi Kumaran, managing partner, Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan

For more information about the agenda, please see the brochure here: http://www.managingip.com/pdfs/IndiaIP.pdf

Don’t forget that the forum is free for IP counsel. Places are allocated on a first come, first served basis, register today to secure yours.

Advisers, consultants or private practitioners can SAVE US$200 by registering before December 23, 2011.

We look forward to meeting you in February.

Kind regards,

James Nurton

Managing Editor

www.mangingip.com

International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) asks the US Administration to place India under watch for piracy [India]

A group of American copyright trade associations has asked the US to put India, along with a dozen other nations including Pakistan and China, on its 'Priority Watch List' for intellectual property violations.
The recommendation has been made by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) -- a coalition of seven trade associations representing American copyright-based industries -- to the office of US Trade Representative.
The 13 countries, which have been recommended by the IIPA to be placed in 'Priority Watch List' in 2009, include Argentina, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia and Thailand.
In its report on India to the USTR, the IIPA has said that "piracy, physical, Internet and over mobile devices worsened in 2008".
"With the US economy shedding jobs at an alarming rate, our government needs to redouble it efforts to stem massive global theft of US-copyrighted works in physical form and on the Internet," IIPA said in a statement.
"Piracy causes significant economic losses to our country, undermining industries and companies that historically have generated new jobs at a rate two to three times greater than that of our economy as a whole," it noted.
According to IIPA, India suffered an estimated trade loss of 1.09 billion dollars in 2008 due to copyright piracy. The same stood at 1.19 billion dollars in the year-ago period.
It also pointed out that in India, "while pockets of some progress can be in the enforcement system, it remains ineffective to deter piracy".
Placing a trading partner country of the US under the 'watch list' indicates that there are particular problems with respect to intellectual property rights protection, enforcement or market access for people relying on IP.
Further, nations coming under the 'Priority Watch List' would be the main focus of bilateral attention related to the problematic areas.
The member associations of the Washington-based IIPA represent more than 1,900 US companies producing and distributing materials protected by copyright laws worldwide including computer and entertainment software, theatrical films, television programmes and music.
The seven associations that are part of IIPA are Association of American Publishers, Business Software Alliance, Entertainment Software Association, Independent Film & Television Alliance, Motion Picture of America, National Music Publishers' Association and Recording Industry Association of America.
The IIPA's submission discusses copyright piracy, the legal and enforcement reforms needed to fight it and other market access barriers in 48 countries.
The IIPA's review of the 'Special 301' report for 2009 on Copyright Protection and Enforcement has asked the American government to place 39 out of the total 48 to be named to an "appropriate USTR watch list".
The US government's 'Special 301' report pertains to intellectual property protection and market access issues in foreign countries.
"The US creative industries -- business and entertainment software, film, television and home video entertainment, music and recording, and book and journal publishing -- are important drivers of the US economy, contributing substantially to domestic growth and employment, including over 110 billion dollars annually in revenue from foreign trade," it said.
IIPA has also called for greater global law enforcement cooperation to tackle piracy.

E-filing in India, a long way to go [IP in India]

The government’s ambitious project to encourage electronic filing of patent and trademark applications has received an embarrassingly poor response in its first year. Of the 35,000 patent applications filed last year, only 410 (1.17%) were filed online. Worse, only 0.24% or 242 of the one lakh trademark applications during 2007-08 were filed online.

The facility for filing of patent and trademark applications from anywhere in the world at any time through the Internet, was launched in July 2007 to help the Indian Patent and Trade Mark Offices function as paperless offices. Government officials termed the poor show as “teething troubles” and blamed it on ignorance and reluctance on the part of Companies and individuals to use the new system.

To correct the situation, the government had asked patent officers and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to provide training to patent attorneys, through a programme conducted in the four metros. Consequently, in the two months of the current financial year, online applications for patents and trademarks have improved marginally. Online applications constituted 4.9% of the 6,000 patent applications filed so far in this financial year while it also constituted 1.34% of the 20,000 trademark applications.

Currently, there are only about a dozen countries that have e-filing facilities, with India recently becoming a member of this elite group which consists of countries like USA , Japan , South Korea, China and the European Patent Office. With patent applications from China outstripping those from India by leaps and bounds, the Centre has launched a national awareness, sensitisation and consultancy programme by roping in universities, laboratories, state level chambers of commerce and industry, patent attorneys and the scientific community.

The proactive campaign which involves an outlay of Rs 20 crore, would establish a correlation between intellectual property, innovation, productivity and competitiveness. The objective of the programme was to take the intellectual property regime to the bottom of the industrial pyramid and invigorate the proprietary rights culture in the country. An effective online filing system can prove to be the lynchpin for this strategy’s success.

The benefits of e-filing of patent and trademark applications include getting an application number immediately, on-line verification assuring error-free filing and obtaining the filing date, a speedy registration process, being able to save the date locally in the applicant’s personal computer, printing the completed application data and recalling the contact details for subsequent applications. This would have meant savings on paper, valuable time and money.

Payments can be made through the Payment Gateway of authorised bankers, which would save time and money and also put an end to the hassles involved in visiting and filing the applications in the offices. NIC has developed modules for e-filing and on-line processing with State Bank of India providing the payment gateway.

But patent lawyers said though the e-filing system is a major improvement over the previous one, it also hasits own limitations.

Incidentally, the government is working towards sending more officials to be trained by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, UNIDO, as well as Japanese and US patent offices. Several vacant posts of patent examinees also need to be filled up.

To enhance the prestige of the Indian Patent Office (IPO) and to attract work from abroad, the government is also in the process of transforming IPO into an International Search Authority and an International Preliminary Examining Authority under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Currently, there are only 12 such authorities.

Besides, India would soon join the Madrid Protocol on Trade Marks. Madrid Protocol is a simple and cost-effective system for registration of International Trademarks. India’s membership of the Madrid Protocol will aid Indian Companies in registering their trademarks in other member countries of the Protocol through a single application.

FICCI advocates 'knowledge centres' [India]

Industry body Ficci today said knowledge and education centres should be set up in patent offices across the country to educate the public with the role of Intellectual Property in emerging economies. The centres could house exhibition areas, besides making available literature on Intellectual Property to create awareness about protection and enforcement of IP, according to a Ficci release.

Ficci and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) have constituted a Consultative Working Group to make the Indian Patent Office more responsive to industry. In recommendations made to DIPP, Ficci said users who file patent applications electronically should be incentivised by reducing their filing fee. Transactions of records across patent offices also need to be expedited, it said.

As a result of deliberations of the consultative group, a separate wing in Mumbai Patent Office has been set up for data analysis. The data include records on technical fields by year of filings, number of patents granted to a company in each sector, list of companies filing patents, pending applications and country-wise patents in force. The patent office has also made online the abstracts of patent applications as well as copies of patents granted and decisions of the controllers, enabling third parties to check legal status of the patent application, the chamber said.

Will 'Peter the Scot' harm Indian Geographical Indications? [India]

India can have its whisky, and drink it too, but it risks losing out in the global rice and tea market.
A ruling by the Supreme Court on Tuesday ended the almost two-decades-long challenge by an association of Scotch whisky makers to Khoday India Ltd’s right to have a non-Scotch whisky brand called Peter Scot because of the similarity between the words “Scot” and “Scotch”.
But the ruling could result in global retaliation and affect Indian products such as basmati rice and Assam tea, say analysts. That’s because the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Khoday despite the geographical indication (GI) status enjoyed by Scotch. Unlike a trademark—a unique and distinctive sign to identify a product or service—a GI is a sign used on goods that have a specific place of origin and possess qualities or reputation that are due to that origin.
In many cases, a GI is merely the name of the place where the goods originate. “Champagne” and “Tuscany” are some examples of GIs. Indian examples include “Assam tea”, “Darjeeling tea” and “Kanchipuram silk saree”. Basmati rice is also a GI.

In this case, Khoday, which began producing Peter Scot 40 years ago, registered the trademark in 1974. Twelve years later, the Scotch Whisky Association or SWA, a group of manufacturers and exporters of Scotch whisky, raised an objection before the registrar of trademarks, arguing that the word “Scot” was deceptively similar to “Scotch” and would mislead the consumers into believing that the product was of Scottish origin. The registrar ruled in SWA’s favour.
Khoday appealed to the Madras high court which too ruled against it. The high court order delivered in October was challenged by Khoday in the Supreme Court.
A two-judge bench on Tuesday allowed the appeal and validated the use of the trademark “Peter Scot”.
The judgement swung in favour of Khoday on two points. The first was the delay of 12 years on part of SWA in filing an objection.
The second was that consumers of Scotch whisky in India are discerning enough to distinguish between Scotch whisky and whisky made in India.
Referring to precedents from countries such as Australia and the US, the judges said the legal test applied to check deception of consumers by the high court were incorrect.
The judgement states: “However, tests laid down in Australia and United States in respect of self-same goods are noticed herein before are somewhat different. But then we are concerned with the class of buyer who is supposed to know the value of money, the quality and content of scotch whisky. They are supposed to be aware of the difference of the process of manufacture, the place of manufacture and their origin.”
The apex court’s judgement, interestingly, overturns numerous verdicts of high courts in the country that granted SWA relief by passing restraining orders against liquor manufacturers in India for using words such as “Scot”, “Highland” and “Chief”, words that SWA contended were associated with Scotch whisky brewed in Scotland.

A sound achievement: Bose inducted into Inventors Hall of Fame

Driving uphill to the 500,000-square-foot glass and steel headquarters of the Bose Corporation, accurately dubbed “The Mountain,” one can see that Amar Gopal Bose has accomplished quite a lot in his 78 years.

Originally from Philadelphia, Bose, who was recently inducted into the 2008 National Inventors Hall of Fame, first discovered his love of audio electronics while fixing radios in his basement as a teenager during World War II. Later, in high school, he would take off Fridays to work at a radio repair shop, an arrangement that his classmates often teased him about and that lasted until he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947.

He has since grown his audio empire —known as the Bose Corporation — into one of the top sound research and development facilities in the world. The company builds all types of high-end audio equipment, from commercially available music players and home theaters to auditorium sound systems and equipment for military aircraft and submarines and even NASA. The Bose Corporation has also branched out into automotive work, developing a new type of vehicle suspension system not yet on the market.

But the start of the Bose Corporation –which employs 9,000 people worldwide and has annual sales of $2.5 billion — was a modest one. Bose and fellow MIT electrical engineering student Sherwin Greenblatt, now the company president, founded the corporation in 1964 with funding from military contracts.

Bose began the company just years after earning his doctoral degree in electrical engineering from MIT and attending New Delhi’s National Physical Laboratory as a Fulbright Scholar. He has since maintained a 50-year partnership with MIT in which he has been both professor and collaborator. As with the university, Bose has created a reputation for innovation. His corporation is home to over 100 patents and trade secrets, with at least ten new patents up for approval each year. In 1987, the Intellectual Property Owners Association co-named him and fellow scientist Dr. William Short “Inventor of the Year” for their acoustic waveguide speaker technology. His induction into the Inventors Hall of Fame came earlier this month. But such honors, he said, are only as good as the next invention.

And it is the future that Bose is most eager about. India, he says, is one of the leaders in the software and IT business, and he sees the nation leading the world in years to come. Technological advancements in South Asia are increasing, said Bose, noting that the United States must ensure it keeps pace. To keep up, he said, the United States must invest in education, one of the things that Bose considers most important for a nation’s survival. Countries like China and India treat education with utmost importance, he added.
Bose’s parents had a strong influence over his life. His father, an immigrant from what is now Bangladesh, was in the business of importing cocoa fiber products. He was also a lecturer and activist for freedom for India during British rule. His mother was born in the United States, but steeped in Indian culture.
“[Being Indian] definitely had an influence,” he said.
When he was a professor at MIT, he always tried to meet the parents of doctoral students, so he could tell more about the students. “You can see the correlation; usually the relationship is pretty tight. You can know a lot about someone’s character by meeting their parents,” he said.
Despite his age and achievements, Bose, who has two children in their 40s, remains a dedicated scientist and researcher who still works six days a week. He likes to conduct most of his research at his home in Wayland, Mass., since he says the work is more mathematical and he doesn’t want to be disturbed. When he’s not at the job, he plays badminton and swims (three times a week) and enjoys listening to classical music.
And he shows no signs of slowing down. When asked if he was planning on retiring anytime soon, he quipped: “What’s that?”
“Research is play for me,” he said as he sat in his office high atop the Bose Mountain, with a postcard-picture perfect view of the Massachusetts countryside. “You’re playing games with the universe,” he said.
He has a wall-sized dry erase board next to his desk so he can write down complicated mathematical formulas and equations that pop into his head throughout the day. “To do research you have to believe something is possible,” he said.
As for inventions the corporation may pursue in the future, Bose remains open minded. “Whatever people come up with that’s interesting and challenging. … If it’s just for sales, we’re not interested. We only want the best product, and we’ll continue on the same path trying to make excellence in whatever we do.”

DIIP to track Counterfeiting and Piracy [India]

With counterfeiting and piracy costing about US $250 million annually, protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has become tremendously essential for all corporations as it directly affects economic stability of the growing economies.

The DIIP [Database on International Intellectual Property], DIIIP is an initiative taken by Interpol and the US Chamber of Commerce, which gives access to law enforcement, government and industry to work together to more effectively detect and investigate the criminal networks engaged in IPR related crimes. The objectives of DIIP are to identify links between criminal groups, use the information in investigations and production of global strategic reports. With huge demographic advantage, India has the challenge to train people and provide opportunities to benchmark against global innovative practices.

India grants 10,000 patents between April 2007 and Jan 2008 [India]

India's Department of Industry Policy and Promotion (DIPP) granted 10,000 patents between April 2007 and January 2008, significantly higher than the 7,000 patents granted between April 2006 and March 2007 said TC James, director, on the sidelines of the second annual global forum on innovation, creativity and intellectual property.

However, he added that though several Indian companies are investing in research and development, more than 60 pct of the patents registered in India are by companies from developed countries like the US, Japan and Europe. About 24,000 patent applications were filed in fiscal 2006-07, but 29,000 were filed between April 2007 and Jan 2008, he said.

Is virtual life a lawless jungle: Role-playing, competition and trademark rights [International]

In video games, as in professional sports, the idea "for the love of the game" has lost much of its allure. Indeed, the industry is ripe for multimillion-dollar litigation. Witness, for example, the landmark $82-million U.S. jury award in 2005 against Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. for infringing Immersion Corp.'s video-game patents.

Even arbitration awards, known for their conservatism, have been in the millions. In February, Ubisoft Entertainment won a $13.2-million award against MGA Entertainment for breach of a video-game licence agreement involving the popular Bratz dolls. MGM is involved in a high-stakes battle with Mattel over whether the toymaker actually created the dolls. The case is set for trial in the spring.

Most intriguing, however, are the unscripted games, called real-world games or virtual worlds. Examples include Active Worlds, Everquest, There, The Sims Online and Red Light Center. The most popular however, is Second Life, created and operated by Linden Research Inc., also known as Linden Lab.

The twist, from an intellectual property (IP) point of view, is that users, known as "residents," create most of the content. A three-dimensional modelling tool allows them to build virtual landscapes, buildings, vehicles, machines and other objects to use, trade and sell. Because residents own their creations, a thriving market economy using a synthetic currency -- "Linden dollars" -- freely convertible to real-world currency has emerged. It includes both a currency exchange and a stock exchange.

No surprise, then, that many household brands and other companies, including financial institutions, law firms, universities and professional organizations like the American Bar Association have a presence on Second Life. Countries such as Sweden, Estonia and the Maldives have even opened embassies there.

Companies go to Second Life to do business, test new products, advertise real-world goods and services, build brand awareness and showcase innovation. All of this means, however, that virtual worlds are ripe for intellectual-property disputes. The freedom that users have to create virtual assets makes it as easy for them to create and sell infringing items as it is to create original non-infringing items. It's equally simple for users to create digital replicas of real-world content branded with real-world trademarks.

But IP enforcement is elusive, because the law has yet to confront the divide -- or lack of it -- between real and virtual.

For example, it's unclear whether someone who commercializes a virtual copy of a patented real-world object commits patent infringement and if so, in which jurisdiction. It's also unclear whether someone who develops a trademark used only to identify virtual goods and services generates enforceable trademark rights in the real world. And it's not known whether making virtual use of a trademark, which can be confused with a real-world trademark, amounts to trademark infringement. But rights holders can't really stand around waiting for the courts to decide the law.

Eros, a company that created virtual beds that it sold to online users so they could have virtual sex, faced this problem when an unknown person created unauthorized replicas of the beds that it sold for a lower price. Eros identified the infringer, however, by obtaining court-ordered subpoenas directing Linden Lab and Internet service providers to release information about the anonymous defendant, who has since been identified.

Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure [India]

The "Draft Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure, India" [Third Edition, February 25, 2008] is now available on-line.

AOL pays $850m for Bebo in cash deal [International]

AOL has bought social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. The Time Warner-owned web services company said that the Bebo network would be a valuable place for it to sell advertising.

AOL began in the internet access business, but has expanded to offer instant messaging software AIM and ICQ. Social networking sites have been a phenomenon, with tens of millions of internet users keeping in touch and posting information about their lives on sites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace. Traditional business has been keen to buy into the phenomenon and instead of launching their own platforms, business giants have tended to buy into existing sites.

Bebo rival Facebook received $240 million in funding from Microsoft last October in a deal that valued the company at $15 billion. MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Coproration in 2005 for $580 million.

India, Brazil 'impeding' patent harmonisation: experts

Countries like India and Brazil are "impeding the process" of patent harmonisation by mixing up issues of traditional knowledge and genetic resources with IPR, a group of international experts on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) said today. "India and Brazil are the only two countries to rake up such issues. They are trying to kill patents and destroy efforts of patent harmonisation," Martin J Adelman of the George Washington University Law School told reporters here.

To prove his point, he cited the recent Novartis case in which the Swiss firm's petition challenging section 3(d) of Patents Amendment Act, was dismissed by the Madras High Court. The court last year dismissed two writ petitions challenging constitutional validity of section 3d of the Patent (amendments) Act 2005.

India's wealth was not dependent on traditional knowledge but the strides it makes technologically and scientifically. "Everybody will be richer if India and Brazil recognise that traditional knowledge is not a patent issue," he said.

Heniz Bardehle, partner of German firm 'Bardehle, Pagenberg, Dost, Altenburg and Geissler,' said the patent system was only for novelty and new inventions and not for the traditional knowledge. The patent was a worldwide mechanism to create wealth, he added. Herbert C Wamsley, Executive Director of US-Intellectual Property Owners Association, said patent system in India was about to expand in enormous way with patent applications trebling in the last five years. Over 28,000 applications had been filed in the country, he said.

UW and GIIP in Indian alliance to further IP [India]

With India’s emergence as a major economic player comes the need to grapple with obstacles that often confront developing nations, including intellectual property rights. Intellectual property law deals with the legalities of patents, copyrights, trademarks and all other information that can be the “exclusive right” of a person or group. The market demand of intellectual property (IP) professionals is expected to rise to 15,000 within the next three years, according to The Times of India.

As of right now, India has less than 1,000 practicing patent professionals. To meet this demand, the UW’s Center for Advanced Study and Research on Intellectual Property (CASRIP), along with the UW’s Intellectual Property Law and Policy Masters of Law (LL.M.) program has agreed to join forces with the Global Institute of Intellectual Property (GIIP) to provide qualified Indian graduate students with an advance level certificate program on patent and intellectual property.

The program, Brunstad said, would use the American model “to contribute to the understanding and advancement of India’s IP system.” Chief among the reasons for IP law’s prevalence in today’s economy is the mandate issued by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that all of its members must adhere to the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights laws (TRIPS).
“Certainly India’s obligation under the TRIPS has caused greater respect for IP laws,” said UW law professor Dan Laster, who specializes in intellectual property.

Aside from meeting the demands of the WTO, the patent certificate program would serve to fulfill the goals presented on the CASRIP Web site — to facilitate a dialogue between various countries about their different approaches to IP law and to analyze the effects of these differences on technological invention and international trade.

GIIP has headquarters both in San Jose, Calif., and New Delhi, India. The organization’s chief goal is to train a team of Indian professionals who can accommodate the needs of global IP customers.

India on growth wave into new age of tech globalization

No longer simply an epicenter of outsourcing, India is riding a new wave of globalization as the economics of the technology business turn it into a regional design and development hub. The subcontinent is seeing an explosion of business and forging IT partnerships with neighbors as diverse and disparate as China, Egypt, Pakistan, Australia and Dubai, as these and other would-be technology players strive to usher in a new phase of tech-driven development to the region, which includes North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf states.

This new geotechnology axis is destined to have a profound impact on the global IT and technology sectors, and its arrival marks a turning point in the shift of the industry's balance of power from West to East. "We are seeing a whole new age of globalization today," according to analysts at Bengaluru-based Prayag Consulting. "Three countries that are taking full advantage of this paradigm shift are Israel, China and India."

As India extends its connections throughout Asia, Australia, the Middle East and Africa, it will emerge not just as the region's business and technology leader, but as a more powerful player in the global IT sector. That will have a ripple effect on the entire market as next-generation semiconductor and system development--including embedded-systems design--follows trends that arise from the burgeoning domestic and regional economies.

This factor was topmost in the minds of the India Semiconductor Association as ISA convened its 2008 Vision Summit in Bengaluru recently. The organization expects that India will evolve from a design-oriented industry into a major electronics manufacturing hub before the end of the decade.

It was also the underlying theme at another recent event in Mumbai, as would-be regional tech players like Egypt, Australia and China vied for notice from India-based IT service and technology development companies at the India Leadership Forum.

Among the most revealing sessions at the Mumbai event were the "focused country sessions." These informational and networking meetings underscored the spillover effect of India's IT success, pointing to bright prospects for smaller regional players eager to ride India's coattails and become part of the new regional development axis.

Pakistan is already enjoying the knock-on effect of India's steady rise as a regional and global IT superstar. With a population of 160 million, Pakistan will be the first in the world to complete a nationwide deployment of WiMax wireless communications technology. This boost in infrastructure will help make its technical talent pool more competitive and will serve as another catalyst for regional economic development.

"It's a case of petrodollars at work," noted Shahid Azim, the Harvard-educated CEO of Braintree Group (Islamabad, Pakistan).
Like India, Pakistan has a large pool of well-educated engineering and IT professionals eager to participate in the global IT sector. With the Pakistan economy enjoying robust growth, Western companies are looking to India's neighbor as another source of technical IT talent.
"The idea is to set up R&D centers. It's just beginning," Azim said, projecting optimism that Pakistan will follow India's well-worn path to global significance.

With the aim of unlocking the technology potential of the Middle East, the Gulf and Africa, Egypt's General Authority for Investment (GAFI) also came to Mumbai in search of potential partnerships. Marshaling a 55-person delegation of Egyptian corporate executives and government officials, GAFI mounted an aggressive diplomatic and commercial initiative at the Leadership Forum designed to foster long-term relationships with its historic trading partner, India, and to position Egypt as a player in the evolving regional development hub.

With a GDP growing at 7.2 percent per year and a mobile-phone growth rate of 50 percent per year, Egypt also boasts one of the region's lowest IT outsourcing cost structures--lower than Eastern Europe's--including the world's lowest telecom costs. The nation is undergoing tax, customs and financial-sector reform, and has a talent pool consisting of 300,000 graduates with strong commercial, engineering and science backgrounds. Its unique multilingual heritage with English, French, German, Italian and Spanish language skills also works in Egypt's favor. Multinational investors active there include Mentor Graphics, Oracle, Vodaphone, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

A new ‘adda’ [hangout] for lawyers networking in India [India]

The Indian legal community has a new player in the online field: a portal called www.legaladda.com, which seems to have gotten the nod from Microsoft. Surprising, given the rather casual and colloquial use of the word ‘adda’ as part of the brand. Not the kind of company that Microsoft would like to keep. ‘Adda’, a colloquial word is Hindi slang for hangout. Is this a serious site? We will have to wait and see…

Law Wire™ had a look at the portal itself. It has this to say on the home page by way of introduction:
LegalAdda seeks to build a vibrant community of legal professionals in India.
The site aims to facilitate collaboration amongst the legal ecosystem and network with each other. We invite students, practicing lawyers, law firms, colleges & universities to actively participate at the site.
At LegalAdda, you can participate in discussions at the forums. Your white papers on legal topics are invited at the "Contributions" section. Events of interest to the legal community can be shared at the Events section. The "Jobs and Internships" tab provides opportunity for prospective employers to post their open positions. Candidates looking for internships & jobs can benefit from this section.

It is an interesting concept, and slightly different from the existing legal portals on the market, which serve as agglomerations [euphemism for ‘databases’ of laws and rules] and occasionally offer legal advice in violation of the Bar Council of India Rules. The USP of the website appears to be that it is essentially a social networking site and a space for people in the legal world to meet and connect with each other. One is curious to see if this will catch on.

CII hosts meet on innovation,creativity, IPR in Mumbai [India]

CII in collaboration with the U.S.Chamber of Commerce & U.S. India Business Council (USIBC) & Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Govt. of India, will host the 2nd Annual Global Forum on Innovation, Creativity and Intellectual Property in Mumbai, India on 26-27 February 2008 at Hotel Hyatt Regency. The forum is being Organized Further innovation and Intellectual Property Rights enforcement; Develop solutions to the persistent IP challenges throughout the world and Publicize new IP initiatives, including legislative reforms.

Some of the Key sessions of the forum are: Developing new treatments and cures: the role of innovation, the process of innovation; Case studies in developing a competitive environment, Judicial remedies for IP Infringement, Creator to consumer: Protecting Intellectual Property in a digital age, Global trends in IP protection and International law Enforcement: working with brand owners to protect IP.

This is has attracted participation from 15 Countries across the World. The Key speakers for the forum are: Ronald K. Noble, Secretary General, INTERPOL, Shanker Annaswamy, Chairman, CII, National Committee of IP Owners & Managing, Director, IBM India Pvt. Ltd, David Chavern, Executive Vice President & COO, US Chamber of Commerce, K.V. Subramaniam, President and CEO Reliance Life Sciences, Sangita Reddy, Executive Director (Operations), Apollo Hospitals Group, Dr. Swati Piramal, Director, Strategic Alliances and Communication ,Nicholas Piramal Ltd, Martin Shively, Director, Worldwide Intellectual Property Operations & Associate General Counsel, Microsoft, Mr. N N Prasad, Jt. Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Ministry of Industry & Commerce, Govt. of India. Hugh Stephens, Senior Vice President, International Relations & Strategic Policy, Asia Pacific, Time Warner, Ambassador Teresita C. Schaffer, Director for South Asia, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Geoffrey Yu, Senior Specialist Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Law, Singapore, Luiz Paulo Teles Ferreira Barreto, Vice Minister of Justice, and President of CNCP (Conselho Nacional de Combate a Pirataria), Government of Brazil, Benoit Battistelli, French IP Commissioner and Director General, National Institute for Industrial Property, France, Larry Molloy, Worldwide Vice President, Brand Protection, Johnson & Johnson Company, Jorge Amigo, Director-General, Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, Rakesh Bakshi, Director – Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt. Ltd, and Member, CII National of Intellectual Property Owners, New Delhi, India .

This is one of the flagship events of CII National Committee of IP Owners which spearheads CII National & International Initiatives in Intellectual Property Protection & Enforcement.

Patent Scorecard; India loses out [India]

If the number of patent applications filed under the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is any indication, India appears to be a laggard among the knowledge- and innovation-driven economies. That the country is way behind developed nations like the US and Japan in seeking patent safeguards for inventions, is understandable. What is more noteworthy is that it compares poorly even with a much smaller economy like South Korea, as also the much bigger China. The data put out by WIPO show that only 686 patent applications were filed from India in 2007, against 7,061 from Korea and 5,456 from China. And while the rate of patent filings is growing steadily elsewhere, it is on the slide in India. The number of applications in 2007, as a result, was the second-smallest in the last five years.

However, single-number comparisons of complex processes can be deceptive. So it is worth pointing out that any comparison based merely on the number of patent applications could be misleading, and other relevant factors also need to be taken into the reckoning. A comparison of India with China must be weighted for the fact that the sectors that drive economic growth are different in the two countries. While software and services predominate as Indian growth engines, Chinese growth is coming in substantial measure from new, mass-scale manufacturing activities. In the Indian software sector, research and development (R&D) activity is controlled largely by the big global companies, with headquarters elsewhere, and they treat India as an offshore R&D hub to make use of its low-cost, scientific and engineering talent pool. The patents filed on the basis of such work will mostly be done in the company’s country of origin, so it will not show up in India’s number. Also, there is little scope for patenting when it comes to software services. And where the life-science and pharmaceutical industry is concerned, investments in in-house R&D are a recent phenomenon. As this trend picks up, one should expect patent filings to increase.

That said, the importance of patenting has come slowly to Indian companies. This could be because of a slow awakening to globalisation, and because India is a signatory to a large number of global pacts and protocols that provide automatic intellectual property protection to innovations in different fields in all the member countries. China, on the other hand, has not been as open to embracing knowledge protection obligations through such treaties. In any case, the Chinese track record in respecting intellectual property has been dismal and many global companies have suffered on this account. Though India’s record in this respect may also not be perfect, it has taken two key steps through the amendment of the Patent Act in 2005 to align it with the international agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights (Trips), and the enactment of a law on sui generis plant variety and farmers’ rights protection. Nevertheless, even after considering these factors, the truth is that India does not score very well on the R&D front. The positive change is that, even in manufacturing industries like automobiles, Indian companies now show signs of doing serious R&D work.

Global patent body wants India to break walls [India]

The international patent body has invited India to join countries that are working on harmonisation, as this will enable patent procedures to be simplified. The harmonisation effort seems to have hit a roadblock given the two contentious issues raised by India and Brazil, namely those pertaining to genetic resources and traditional knowledge protection.

A panel of experts, including the George Washington University Law School (GWULS) professor Martin J Adelman, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judge Randall R Rader and Bardehle, Pagenberg, Dost Altenburg and Geissler partner Heinz Bardehle shared wide-ranging perspectives on patents at a press conference here on Wednesday. From seeking a simple system for filing a patent to how India has been “killing” patents and “destroying” efforts to harmonise, these issues were among the key points that were touched upon by the panelists. Prof Adelman said India’s wealth is not dependent on traditional knowledge, but the strides it makes technologically and scientifically apart from stoking the entrepreneurial spirit of its people. Everybody will be richer if India and Brazil recognise that traditional knowledge is not a patent issue. The patent system in India is about to expand in an enormous way.

The number of patent applications has more than tripled in recent times. Over 28,000 applications have been filed in the country. The patent examiners have also increased to 150 and given the “work-overload,” approval to have 600 additional examiners in the next five years, are in place, noted Intellectual Property Owners Association executive director Herbert C Wamsley. The patent procedures are under constant process of re-evaluation and the effort is to have a single patent system that will be suitable for all industries. This is needed, especially since it is only fast protection processes that will help industries like IT. “Even before the patent is granted, the technology becomes redundant,” he added. As countries have different systems, the endeavour is to have systems that will be high-quality, timely and cost-effective. This means the focus has to be on bringing harmonisation and uniformity in the patent systems, the experts said. Mr Rader said the world economy is driven by innovation, change and new products are the order of the day. In such a situation, it is imperative that human ingenuity has to get legal protection. Countries like Korea and Taiwan are already creating courts by emulating the models in Japan and the US. Even in the US, statutes to make its patent laws more uniform with the rest of the world, is pending in the Congress. Rather than the first inventor being recognised as the owner of the intellectual property (IP), the attempt is to target the first to disclose it to the public, he added.

Patents and Human Rights [comments by Dr. Ekbal]

There is growing recognition that the regulation of patents and other Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) cannot be reasonably made with a unique, universal standard. Different socio-economic conditions and levels of development require different intellectual property systems, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala and neuro-surgeon B. Ekbal said.
He was presenting a paper ‘Intellectual Property Rights: Challenges to Academic Research’ at a national seminar on ‘Quality Access and Social Justice in Higher Education,’ organised by the Kerala State Higher Education Council.

The patent system may entail considerable short-term costs for developing countries, mainly due to administrative costs and problems with higher prices for medicines and key technological inputs while long-term benefits seem uncertain and costly to achieve in many nations, particularly poor countries. Moreover, higher standards of patent protection are unlikely to have a positive effect on local innovation except in countries and sectors that have reached a certain level of technological development and have the capacity to finance substantial research and development, Dr. Ekbal said.

IPRs should not be implemented so as to violate and infringe upon human rights; they should be subsumed to human rights, national interests and the preservation of genetic resources. “In fact, intellectual products are basically social products. While granting certain rights to innovators, this should not be forgotten. Therefore intellectual property rights cannot be considered as ‘rights’ as in the case of immutable human rights,” he argued in his paper.

Dr. Ekbal pointed out that the whole argument regarding IPR is built on a contradiction that in order to promote the development of ideas it is necessary to reduce the freedom with which people can use them. Central to the projected utility of IPRs is the notion that creation is facilitated by the provision of a temporary monopoly that ensures that the author of a work will be the sole beneficiary of any profits. With the institutionalisation of IPRs, individual creators ceased to be beneficiaries and were replaced by large corporate interests. Most individual creators do not gain much from IPRs and are frequently ignored or exploited.

Whose Pashmina?

Squabbles between Pakistan and India over trade-related issues are multiplying. The latest to erupt is over intellectual property protection for the prized pashmina wool and the products made from it, by getting a geographical indication tag. In dispute is the application filed by a Jammu and Kashmir-based handicrafts association to register “Kashmiri Pashmina” as the exclusive brand for products made in this Indian state. This will lend “Kashmiri Pashmina” the same kind of brand protection enjoyed by, say, champagne and Darjeeling tea. And the challenger, predictably, is a pashmina-trading organisation in Pakistan which wants products produced in the part of Kashmir under that country’s occupation to be given the same IPR protection.

Prima facie, Pakistan would appear within its rights to put forth such a plea, as pashmina is produced from the under-growth of the hair of a special changthangi or pashmina breed of goat that has been indigenous to the high altitudes of the Himalayas, including the Pakistan-occupied region. But if that logic is applied, Nepal too should be made a party to this patent protection as its upper mountainous reaches have also been home to pashmina goats for thousands of years and pashmina-based products have been woven there for a long period. Even in India, for that matter, pashmina goats have not been confined to the Kashmir region, and have inhabited the higher hills of Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal as well. The real difference lies in the quality, as also exclusivity, of the pashmina fleece and its products produced in different regions though, admittedly, all kinds of genuine pashmina wool possess the envious trait of being incomparably soft. India’s case might be that additional scientific effort has gone into refining the quality of pashmina and improving the fleece yield of these goats.

While it must be presumed that these aspects will be kept in mind by the geographical indications tribunal when considering the application in question, it is important to recognise that pashmina imitations have been in circulation, and been widely traded, in many parts of the world, jeopardising the monopoly of the Himalayan region over this unique wool. For most westerners, cashmere is a synonym for pashmina and even genuine pashmina shawls, scarves and other garments made in Kashmir are traded as cashmere shawls or scarves. Worse still, the growing demand and below-par supplies of genuine pashmina garments have enabled some unscrupulous manufacturers to make and sell products of soft synthetic viscose as pashmina products, and thus to take advantage of the high prices commanded by pashmina. All this needs to be curbed, so fighting the IPR battle for getting a geographical indication tag is only a part of the battle.

So, while the need for getting intellectual property safeguards for pashmina is self-evident, it is not pashmina alone that needs to be protected. There are other products as well, like aromatic basmati rice, which are the common heritage of the sub-continent and which, therefore, need to be safeguarded through mutual cooperation rather than confrontation. Had Pakistan cooperated with India in getting a geographical indication tag for basmati in the same way that it now seeks protection for its pashmina, it would have provided a basis for working together. It is not too late for the two countries to sit together and work out a joint strategy on such issues.