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The Intellectual Property Appellate Board, a specialised tribunal set up by the Government to address intellectual property (IP) related cases with greater efficiency, has come in for sharp criticism.
A writ petition challenging the legality of the IPAB has been filed in the Madras High Court by Mr Shamnad Basheer (the Ministry of Human Resource Development's Professor of IP Law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences) and his research associate, Mr Prashant Reddy, with the help of three law students — Sai Vinod, Shambo Nandy and Debanshu Khettry.
Lacks IP expertise
Claiming that the IPAB was not as autonomous as it was expected to be when set up, the writ petition alleges that the Board suffers from a lack of IP expertise and that many of its orders are routinely overturned by High Courts. Mr Basheer told Business Line that last year, almost 75 per cent of its orders were reversed by the High Court, and emphasised that the Centre's dispute resolution mechanism for issues across trademarks, patents, etc., needed greater scrutiny.
The writ petition is the first project of Mr Basheer's recently founded P-PIL (Promoting Public Interest Lawyering). Mr Arvind Datar, a senior counsel and constitutional law expert, will argue the matter pro bono with Mr Ananth Padmanabhan, a lawyer in Chennai.
Though the IPAB was created to ease the load at High Courts, it has fared no better, Mr Basheer said. The annual report of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), under whose jurisdiction IPAB falls, records an abysmally low disposal rate of the Board, he added.
Raising questions on the appointments to the IPAB, he sid the IPAB had far fewer sittings than the High Courts. Further underlining what he called the pitfalls of “tribunalisation”, he said courts have been cautious on this count and have insisted that any specialist tribunal set up must be free from executive influence and must be manned by people who are otherwise qualified to be High Court judges. Else, the entire process of adjudication will be questionable and justice will suffer, he added.
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