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31 January 2021
India. The word brings to mind a mix of ancient and ultra-modern, from the ghats of Varanasi in northern India to the gleaming skyscrapers of modern Mumbai on India’s west coast. India is a curious mix of ancient culture and one of the countries with the largest data consumption in the world. A shocking 598 million Indians use 4G data, says the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which also notes that by 2024, more than a billion Indians will have access to smartphones.
Large technology firms have made India a second home. Amazon, Facebook, Walmart and others are part of the landscape. Rudra Chaudhuri, director of Carnegie India, notes that in January 2021, India begins a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council, and that in 2022, it will preside over the G20. “Given the current absence of any multilateral structure to govern data, India can use these leadership positions to shape new rules. Its advantage may be especially great while the coronavirus pandemic forces a reevaluation of the global order,” Chaudhuri writes.
This opportunity has been a long time coming, and India’s legal community is well-placed to take a leading role in shaping how India – and the rest of the world – uses and protects data. We’ve known some of India’s best lawyers for nearly two decades, and know that they will be active participants in both creating the legislative and regulatory instruments used in India and in enforcing new laws and regulations as they come into effect, just as they have over recent years with their involvement in creation of India’s modern, effective intellectual property regime.
With India’s growing importance in the world, we turned to IP professionals in the region in order to understand better what clients need today. Asia IP asked a large number of professionals – mostly in-house counsel and corporate legal managers – what they were looking for from their legal service providers. From their answers, we have compiled our list of 100 India IP Experts, those lawyers who understand just what their clients need and are able to provide them with the best practical advice.
Today’s clients are looking for more than just a degree from a top-notch university and a couple of decades of practice. In order to be an outstanding provider of intellectual property advice, a lawyer must also be capable of understanding how intellectual property impacts the rest of his client’s business, and be able to provide practical, real-world, business-savvy advice. She must be able to provide sound advice on the current law, but also needs to be able to understand coming trends which are likely to impact her client’s business.
Unlike days past when she might have played just a bit role, today’s IP Expert is every bit a full-fledged team member.
Big national intellectual property firms like Anand and Anand, K&S Partners and Remfry & Sagar dominate the list, but not nearly as much as they would have just a few years ago. Anand and Anand landed eight lawyers on the list, while Remfry & Sagar put five there.
But the legacy of firms like those runs far deeper: dozens of lawyers on the list have worked their way up to the top of other firms on the list after getting their start at one of India’s legacy IP practices.
K&S Partners, Krishna & Saurastri and Lall & Sethi landed four lawyers on the list, while seven different firms had three lawyers each named to the list: Chadha & Chadha, Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan, RK Dewan & Co, S. Majumdar & Co, Saikrishna & Associates, Singh & Singh and Y.J. Trivedi & Co.
Seven different firms had two lawyers listed: AZB & Partners, DSK Legal, Inttl Advocare, Ira Law, Khaitan & Co, Kochhar & Co and LexOrbis.
Most of the lawyers named to our list have multiple practice specialties. Many of them are litigators, while others concentrate on prosecution work or provide strategic advice. All of them have something in common: they are experts in their fields and, in one way or another, they provide extra value for their clients. They are Asia IP’s India IP Experts.
India’s IP Experts is based solely on independent editorial research conducted by Asia IP. As part of this project, we turned to thousands of in-house counsel in India, Asia and elsewhere and around the world, as well as India-focused partners at international law firms, and asked them to nominate private-practice lawyers including foreign legal consultants, advisers and counsel.
The final list reflects the nominations received combined with the input of editorial team at Asia IP, which has more than 40 years of collective experience in researching and understanding India’s legal market.
All private practice intellectual property lawyers in India were eligible for inclusion in the nominations process; there were no fees or any other requirements for inclusion in the process.
The names of our 100 IP Experts are published here. Each IP Expert was given the opportunity to include their biography and contact details in print and on our website, for which a fee was charged.
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