Counsel split on IPAB
closure
While in-house and private practice counsel see the closure
of India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board as an opportunity for wider
reform of the country’s overburdened judicial system, they have different views
on how that reform should be achieved, several revealed to Managing IP this
week.
While some say that the technical expertise of IPAB members has
been useful for IP owners, others argue that the huge delays in appointing
experts and members to the board have made the hearing process too arduous.
Mohit Patwardhan, legal and IP counsel at pharma company ACG
Group in Mumbai, says that because the courts are already overburdened, the
01-06-2012
A longstanding and public patent dispute came to an end last week when the UK Court of Appeals ruled that Vodafone had infringed on a standard-essential patent held by IPCom while developing a telecoms solution for the government.
The final ruling went against Vodafone, but interestingly, the case tested the rules around a rarely seen defence of ‘Crown’s use’. In an exclusive interview with
WIPR, a lead lawyer in the dispute says had Vodafone won, the government may have faced “unforeseen” costs over its pandemic response.
Emergency system
Vodafone had been selected by the government for the Mobile Telecommunications Privileged Access Scheme (MTPAS), which saw the government request Vodafone to develop a system that would give emergency services precedence on network channels during high-traffic periods. When trialling the system, Vodafone was found to have infringed on an IPCom standard-essential patent (SEP).