Country Reports March 22, 2006

SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS:

Intellectual Property Appellate Board:

1. The Government of India has announced its plan to set up a dedicated Patent Tribunal – Intellectual Property Appellant Board (IPAB), in Chennai to deal with IPR cases.
2. The IPAB would sit at Chennai and will be chaired by a High Court Judge selected by the Supreme Court and the Government is also planning to have IPABs in Delhi and Mumbai for smooth disposal of IPR cases.
3. The IPAB would help take the burden off the high courts, which have hitherto been dealing with IPR disputes in addition to hearing tens of thousands of other pending cases.

Intellectual Property Law School

India has set up its first dedicated school for teaching IP Law called the Rajiv Gandhi School of IP Law at IIT-Kharagpur. IIT earlier this year in January had signed technical collaboration with George Washington University for exchange of Faculty and Curriculum Research Management.

US-INDO Joint Declaration

During the recent visit of President George.W.Bush early this March, an US-INDO Joint Declaration was made which also emphasized on innovation and its knowledge economy, “wherein it was agreed that the United States and India would work together to promote innovation, creativity and technological advancement by providing a vibrant intellectual property rights regime, and to cooperate in the field of intellectual property rights to include capacity building activities, human resource development and public awareness programs”.