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11 January 2017
“Should we have specialist IP courts in India?” asked Shukadev Khuraijam, a partner with Remfry and Sagar in India.
“Where will we have these IP courts and specialist judges” asked Sandeep Rathod, assistant general counsel and head of litigation for Mylan Laboritories. “As it stands, we don’t have enough court rooms or judges, even for the new commercial courts. The infrastructure is simply not enough to support IP courts” we went on to say, adding that at present, vested interests would make an effective IP court system difficult to introduce.
“But India has to start somewhere” added Khuraijam. “What is the solution?”
Rathod felt that part of the problem was with companies themselves. They need to trust younger lawyers to work on cases, rather than simply turning to the same limited pool of senior counsel, he added. “And we need judges to actually listen to cases properly”
Adding an international perspective, Jurgen Dressel, head of global litigation strategies at Novartis Pharma IP, explained that in his experience, when you file in jurisdictions that don’t have much experience, you always have issues. It would be good to have specialist IP courts, he said, explaining that you get predictable outcomes with specialist knowledge.
“I can throw a dice myself, I don’t need a judge for this” he concluded.
Khuraijam, Rathod and Dressel were speaking at Refry & Sagars IP Seminar in Gurgaon, India.
