Telecom

Spread awareness through Malayalam Wikipedia: Gadgil

praskrishna — 2016-05-05T15:43:59Z

"Contribution of information by people of Rukadi village near Kolhapur to Marathi Wikipedia, by referring to media reports, helped spread the word about mass fish deaths in the region. Similar efforts should be initiated in Kerala so that information about local movements like Plachimada campaign would be available in the public domain," opined environmentalist Madhav Gadgil. He was speaking at the Malayalam Wikipedia workshop hosted by Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre at Vakkom Moulavi Memorial Hall here on Wednesday.

The article was published in the Times of India on May 5, 2016.

The scientist spoke at length on how the information technology in general and the Wikipedia in particular, could help create awareness among commoners about the harmful effects of environmental degradation. He added that though Malayalam Wikipedia is ahead of other Indian languages in documenting geographical details, the content doesn't stretch beyond official information. He suggested that controversial information too must be documented with reference to media reports.

Fuad Jaleel, volunteer editor of Malayalam Wikipedia, explained Wikipedia policies on notability and reliability. The two-day workshop is organised in association with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Malayalam Wikipedia community. On Wednesday, the event focused on identifying topics for wiki-articles and creating basic village/town data by making use of census. Forty participants attending the workshop will contribute articles to Wikipedia on Thursday. Representatives from CIS Bengaluru and members of Malayalam Wikipedia Community will assist them.

"The intention is to add wiki-articles on environmental issues at panchayat level. Malayalam Wikipedia could be used as a medium for citizen journalism. We will organize more workshops and classes," said Ram Kamal, one of the coordinators of Swadeshabhimani centre. V K Damodaran delivered welcome speech and A Suhair presented vote of thanks in the inaugural session.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-times-of-india-may-5-2016-spread-awareness-through-malayalam-wikipedia

Images and links matter quality

rahim — 2016-06-08T09:54:21Z

Wikipedia articles are considered of a higher quality when they have illustrations. An article without images is considered dull. Wikipedia is all about references. Any information on Wikipedia is encouraged to have verifiable citations. Hence images and external links form a criterion for quality of articles on Wikipedias. This blog post tries to analyse the current scenario of CIS-A2K's Focus language areas with respect to images and links.

If we read through the page on English Wikipedia that talks about why adding images improves the quality of Wikipedia, we realise that writing an article is a very difficult task on Wikipedia as it involves one to generate content in their own words, Wikipedia cannot be a copy paste of some content taken from somewhere. Wikipedia has its own style of writing articles, and when we look at the five basic pillars of Wikipedia and the core content policies, they structure the knowledge that we have to a form that best fits Wikipedia and is proven to be effective to larger masses. At the same time, illustrating an article further improves the comprehensibility of an article on Wikipedia.

This takes us to the next question - If only free licensed images are allowed on Wikipedia, how can we illustrate articles where no image is available under a free license, say you are writing about Doraemon or Godrej and want to add the sketch of the character or logo of the company - they are not allowed on commons. What is the way out then?

Some Wikipedias such as English Wikipedia have allowed Wikipedians to upload images locally on the wiki under fair usage policy. This allows Wikipedians to upload low resolution images or audio or video with a pre-defined small length. IT not only helps enrich the Wikipedia content, it also helps in understanding the copyright implications to larger masses editing Wikipedia.

Animation of the act of unrolling a circle's circumference, illustrating the ratio π. Author : John Reid

There are more than 31 million images/videos/audios/documents on commons, which is the central media repository for all Wikipedias. Commons has a policy to keep only free licensed images.

Why references/citations are so important?

Adding references to articles is important to make Wikipedia's content more accurate and reliable. One of the three core content policies on English Wikipedia which is adopted by most Indian languages is to have "Verifiable" content on Wikipedia. This essentially means, whatever content is added to Wikipedia has to have proper links to citations given. If its a book, an ISBN number is desired. In case of newspapers and websites, URLs with access dates are encouraged to be added. If the newspaper does not have a proper archive, Wayback machine from archive.org can be used to create a permanent accessible URL that in turn can be added to the article.

In order to prove NPOV, one can add the same issue opinionated in 3 or more newspapers or books. Here too, an external link is used to provide the verifiable reference.

So, its safe to say that all articles that have an external link in them may have been properly referenced. A list of such articles is generated and the count of such articles that do not have external links is provided below.

Language	Articles without images	Articles without external links	Deadend Pages
Kannada	6,993	10,839	97
Konkani	1,876	1,351	836
Marathi	12,678	29,064	861
Odia	1,227	3,080	11
Telugu	35,701	19,359	585

The numbers in the above table throw the areas of improvement for the focus language area Wikipedias of CIS-A2K. Especially with respect to adding references to articles where in every Wikipedia, almost as much as 50% of the articles do not have proper references.

Deadend pages are those articles on Wikipedia which do not link to any other page on Wikipedia. In recently changed convention, zero namespace pages on Wikipedia that are not redirect pages are not counted as articles if the fall under Deadend pages. A count of deadend pages is also given in the above table for reference. So, effectively total number of articles in any Wiki = total article count shown on home page + deadend pages.

If these three criterion are improved upon, quality of Wikipedia may also go up.

Of course quality of articles depend upon language, spellings, grammar and several other things. But these are broad methods of improving quality.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/images-and-links-matter-quality

Shape of IPRs and Agriculture post the WTO Nairobi Ministerial

sinha — 2016-05-05T07:11:16Z

CIS is running a series of meetups focused on intellectual property to bring folks interested in IP law to discuss developments in access to knowledge, climate change, health, trade, etc. At the first meet-up in February, Prof. Biswajit Dhar delivered a short talk on intellectual property rights and agriculture in a post-Nairobi Ministerial world. This post is a summary of his talk.

Extension of abeyance of Non- violation complaints

At the Nairobi Ministerial, members agreed to extend the non-applicability of non-violation complaints for two years. There are two kinds of disputes which can be initiated at the WTO -first, when the partner country does not fulfill a commitment and such a non-implementation is injures the member country, leading to either nullification or impairment. Second, a country may deem itself to be injured even though the partner country has fulfilled its obligations. For instance, despite India's compulsory license grants complying with TRIPS, the US initiated a dispute against India.

Need for greater negotiating muscle and coalition building at multilateral fora

The Convention on Biological Diversity(CBD) came into force in 1993, followed by the TRIPS agreement in 1995. India became a member of the CBD and gained sovereign rights over its diversity. Before CBD, inventions related to diversity were protected by private rights. The turmeric case, and increasing bio-piracy led to introduction of requirement of disclosing the source. India proposed that along with other details, the source of the biological material should be mandatorily disclosed, including any associated traditional knowledge. Subsequent benefits arising out of use of biological resources had to be shared with the country- it was important to acknowledge that the community had nurtured these resources. The coalition in favour of the disclosure requirement was an interesting one because it was between India, Brazil, sometimes South Africa, Andean countries and Pakistan. This was pushed for in WIPO where the need for a treaty was advocated. The consensus around the disclosure requirement was an example of developing countries forming coalitions to make their interests more pronounced.

Further, greater the evidence, better is a country’s case in negotiations. After the Turmeric case, India realised that it needs written and not oral evidence to produce in the US Courts. That realisation led to the creation of a documentation project for traditional knowledge(Traditional Knowledge Library Database). Since the last decade, India has been sharing this database with patent officers. Since 2009, TKDL has also contested patents in various jurisdictions. At the EPO, India contested 94 patents, while in Canada the number is 25. Although there has been some success in US but major success has been in EU only. However, there is a shortage of manpower to work on the challenges, and as a consequence the efforts have largely failed to push the process of the law. Mounting these challenges also proves to be be exorbitantly expensive. There are indeed very few countries which have effectively done this without succumbing to international political pressure- India is one of them. It is possible to use this democratic space wisely to push back the dominant powers.

Trade is imminent and there will be trade. However, if we do not deal with trade effectively, it will spell doom for us. The Transpacific Partnership(TPP) and Nairobi ministerial should serve as a warning for us. The prevalent fear has been that countries in favour of TPP will be multilateralised. India's steps indicate a roll back of its role at the WTO. Once it moves out of the WTO framework and the Doha agenda fails, TPP signatories will begin to exert pressure on WTO. Granted that there is very little window to move forward, nevertheless, India should try using its influence to fight at the WTO with all resources available. WTO has limitations but such organizations are the only bet we have against multilateral organizations. Currently, India is allowing these organizations to be shaped in an undesirable manner. We have not used the WTO truly well enough, and neither have we been able to influence ongoing negotiations. There is, therefore, a need to rethink our strategy. It is time to step up and engage with lawmakers instead of only engaging with bureaucrats.

Negotiating teams at these multilateral fora are of utmost importance, because of their unique position to influence the law making process at the top-down level. In the long term, they are also a cost saving measure (compared to mounting opposition to patents, etc). Unfortunately, India has kept silent as it watches US and its allies taking over ASEAN. Through TPP, rules are changing and the US-led alliance is taking over countries beyond Pacific Rim, by moving into ASEAN. India is in an isolated position right now and needs a group of its own to collaborate and work as a formidable force against US.

India should have seized the opportunity to group with African nations in the India-Africa forum to consolidate its position. Similarly, Latin countries may also be pursued. These regions are important since India's support at the WTO has been on a sharp decline.

Agriculture

India is also under pressure to remove agricultural subsidies. The subsidy regime was crafted by the EU and US to enable them to exempt their subsidies in an exempt list (green box). Further, US cleverly protected its own export credits so that its own subsidies became exempt. In this manner, even subsidies pertaining to export competition are not totally eliminated. However, other countries like India have raised an issue that in these countries, export subsidy is but one part of total subsidies. The latter has come down and this is problematic because countries like India simply must have potential to safeguard against hunger. The public distribution system is essential for this. India has a system of Minimum Support Price(MSP) and input subsidy. On the other hand, US provides direct income support, arguing that markets should be as close to their pristine form as possible. And input subsidy and MSP do not reconcile with this. According to them, income transfers are better because that does not manipulate prices.

In US and EU, the irony is that, they have farm policies. US has had a farm bill every 4 years since 1933, and EU has a common agricultural policy. India does not have any such policy. The US and EU inform their producers their about expected subsidies for the next 4 years, enabling the producers to plan in advance. In this case, income transfer can work. Therefore, the farmers can take higher risks and can manipulate prices. Their farm rate price is well below the economic cost and international price since they have protection because of the income transfer. The international price is supposed to be efficient (in almost 3 decades, international prices have been same). Since their prices are below international prices, they can dump in the international market. On the other hand, nobody else can enter the US market. Ironically, this income support, which affects international trade so unfairly, is kept out of the scope of WTO deliberations - no questions asked. Further, while the US Farm Bill expenditure has gone up, in contrast, India has a limit on subsidy. Food subsidy is counted in the 10% limit prescribed by the WTO.

The situation is can be summarised as, thus: US's activities eventually escape the WTO, while Indian programmes fall within the scope, more than the usual. Before the Food Security Act, the below poverty line population were the only beneficiaries. And now, the Act benefits two-thirds of the population. As a result, quantum of subsidized food has gone up. If the government decides to give income transfers (instead of subsidies), in order for it to be successful, the tiller has to be the owner of the land, which is problematic in India. Although people want to follow direct benefit transfer for agriculture as well, the question remains that how many workers will actually benefit from it.

It is evident that agriculture is suffering- Mint recently reported on how India is becoming an agro importer. Sugar output has suffered. India might import sugar next year along with pulses, wheat. Productivity is going down. This is will make way for support for genetically modified crops-- which is again what the US wants. If the WTO gets populated by TPP signatories, India cannot continue with providing subsidies because TPP eliminates agricultural subsidies. The only relevant factors are market entry and tariff. This could be agriculture’s deathbed.

Negotiations on agricultural issues have not been effective because of divisions within it. Fragmentations have caused a lack of unity - even a bare common minimum position does not exist. Further, US and allies have used diversionary tactics such as repeatedly asking for evidence, not bringing anything concrete to the table, etc. When the process is frustrated frequently, activist movements also die down.

Loss of bargaining power has led to fatigue within various activist groups in the country. On the other hand, corporations continue prospering. India had put up a strong fight for TRIPS flexibilities, but today elements like TPP are destroying balanced regimes across the world.

Thanks to our intern Aniruddha Majumdar for his assistance on this post.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/shape-of-ip-and-agriculture-post-the-wto-nairobi-ministerial

Comments on Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and their Availability on Frand Terms

Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshane — 2016-05-03T02:30:15Z

The Centre for Internet & Society gave its comments to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. The comments were prepared by Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshané.

Download the PDF To access other submissions to the DIPP Discussion Paper on SEP and FRAND, please click here

Authors

I. PRELIMINARY

1. This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India ("CIS") on the Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and their Availability on FRAND Terms (dated 01 March, 2016), released by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion ("the DIPP"), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India (" the discussion paper/ discussion paper").

2. CIS commends the DIPP for its efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders on this important and timely issue. CIS is thankful for the opportunity to put forth its views.

3. This submission is divided into three main parts. The first part, 'Preliminary', introduces the document; the second part, 'About CIS', is an overview of the organization; and, the third part, 'Submissions on the Issues', answers the questions raised in the discussion paper. A list of annexures and their URLs is included at the end of the document.

II. ABOUT CIS

4. CIS is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, freedom of speech and expression, intermediary liability, digital privacy, and cyber-security.

5. CIS values the fundamental principles of justice, equality, freedom and economic development. This submission is consistent with CIS' commitment to these values, the safeguarding of general public interest and the protection of India's national interest at the international level. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles. In addition, the comments are in line with the aims of the Make in India and Digital India initiatives of the Government of India.

III. SUBMISSION ON THE ISSUES FOR RESOLUTION

6. The following sections provide CIS' views and recommendations on the issues enumerated in section 11 of the discussion paper:

a) Whether the existing provisions in the various IPR-related legislations, especially the Patents Act, 1970 and antitrust legislations, are adequate to address the issues related to SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms? If not, then can these issues be addressed through appropriate amendments to such IPR-related legislations? If so, what changes should be affected?

A.1. The issues related to Standard Essential Patents ("SEPs") and their licensing on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") basis lie at the intersection of intellectual property ("IP") law and competition law . As such, in India, the Patents Act, 1970 ("the Patents Act") and, the Competition Act, 2002 ("the Competition Act") are the relevant legislations to be studied. These have been recently discussed, most recently, by Justice Bakhru in his comprehensive order inTelefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (Publ) v. Competition Commission of India and Another.

A.2. It is our submission that at the moment, amendments to the Patents Act and the Competition Act may not be preferred. As Justice Bakhru has noted in the aforesaid decision, there is no conflict between the remedies in the Patents Act and in the Competition Act, and, the pursuit of rights and remedies under one of these legislations does not bar a party from pursuing rights and remedies in the other. Further, under both legislations, there are scenarios for the respective authorities - the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks ("the Controller") and the Competition Commission of India (" the CCI") for the Patents Act and for the Competition Act respectively - to seek inputs from each other.

A.3. We also note that the CCI is a fairly nascent regulator; one whose jurisdiction is not yet a settled matter of law. While the judgment in the Ericsson-CCI case is indeed a good beginning, we do not believe that the matter has been conclusively decided. Accordingly, given the complex legal questions involved, over not just the interpretation of the Patents Act and the Competition Act, but also constitutional issues around the jurisdiction of regulators and the power of judicial review of the courts, we believe that it would be prudent to examine the ruling of the courts on these issues in some detail, before considering amendments.

A.4. In addition, we are of the opinion that our IP law, and, our competition law, fully honor our international commitments, including the requirements under the TRIPS Agreement. As such, we would urge the Government of India to not enter into free trade agreements including, inter alia, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, that threaten our use of TRIPS flexibilities, and, impose 'TRIPS-plus' obligations.

A.5. We also urge the Government of India to adopt a balanced National IPR Policy, and, a National Competition Policy, both of which has been in abeyance for a considerable amount of time. We believe that these policies are crucial to realize the objectives of the Make in India and Digital India initiatives. At the same time, we submit that these policies be balanced, taking into account the interests of all stakeholders, developed through an extensive consultative process, and, suitably modified based on feedback.

b) What should be the IPR policy of Indian Standard Setting Organizations in developing Standards for Telecommunication sector and other sectors in India where Standard Essential Patents are used?

B.1. The discussion paper identifies four Standard Setting Organizations ("SSOs") in India, namely, the Telecom Standards Development Society of India ("TSDSI"), the Telecommunication Engineering Center ("TEC"), the Bureau of Indian Standards (" BIS"), the Global ICT Standardization Forum for India ("GISFI"), and, the Development Organization of Standards for Telecommunications in India ("DOSTI"). Comments on each of their policies have been made in the following paragraphs.

B.2. The BIS does not have an intellectual property rights ("IPR") policy of its own. The BIS Act, 2016 does not include one either. As the discussion paper notes, the BIS refers to the IPR policies of the relevant international SSO in the context of technology implemented in India, that is the same or equivalent to the ones developed or maintained by the respective SSOs.We recommend that BIS adopt an IPR policy at the earliest, factoring in India specific requirements differences: a large and exponentially growing mobile device market makes it possible for manufacturers, patent owners and implementers alike to achieve financial gains even with a low margin ("India specific requirements"). In addition, our comments on the IPR policy of the TSDSI in paragraph B.4. of this submission (below), may also be considered for the content of the BIS' future policy on IPR.

B.3 . According to the discussion paper, the TEC considers the IPR policies of the International Telecommunication Union. We recommend that like the BIS, the TEC also adopt its own IPR policy, factoring in the India specific requirements detailed above. In addition, our comments on the IPR policy of the TSDSI in paragraph B.4. of this submission (below), may also be considered for the content of the BIS' future policy on IPR.

B.4. The TSDSI, a relatively new standards body, has defined an IPR policy . In respect of this policy, the following observations are presented. First, this policy notes that IPR owners should be adequately and fairly rewarded.Second, it requires members to disclose essential IPRs in a "timely fashion." Third, as per its policy, the TSDSI can request the owner of an essential IPR to undertake, within three months, to license it irrevocably on FRAND terms. At the same time, the policy also states that the (aforesaid) ask may be subject to the condition that licensees agree to reciprocate. Should such an undertaking not be forthcoming, the TSDSI may suspend work on the standard or technical specification in question, or, adopt another course of action. Fourth, the policy identifies two scenarios for the non availability of licences prior to publication, based on the existence, or, the lack thereof, of alternative technologies. In the event of a lack of alternative technology, the policy requires a member to disclose in writing its reasons for not licensing its patents. Following this, it is submitted that there is no clarity on the concrete steps that the TSDSI would adopt in case the efforts to convince a member to license their essential IPRs, fail. The policy only states that "the TSDSI shall take further action as deemed fit." The same is also true where the IPR owner is not a member of the TSDSI. Fifth, the policy also envisages a scenario of non-availability post publication. The procedure for dealing with this is akin to the one detailed above, with the TSDSI asking for a written explanation, considering further action, including the possible withdrawal of the standard or technical specification in question. Sixth, it is observed that the policy does not require a commitment from its members to refrain from seeking injunctive relief. Seventh, it is accordingly recommended that the policy be suitably modified (a) to include India specific requirements discussed above; (b) to require a commitment from its members, that they refrain from seeking injunctive relief; (c) to delete the condition where FRAND negotiations may be subject to a condition of reciprocity; (d) to identify in detail the procedure to be followed in case of patent 'hold-ups' and patent 'hold-outs'; (e) to identify in detail the procedure to be followed in case of refusal to license by TSDSI members, and, non-members, both; and, (f) to include a detailed process on the declassification of a standard or technical specification.

B.5. The IPR policy of GISFI, is substantially similar to the IPR policy of the TSDSI, discussed in paragraph B.4. of this submission (above). Inter alia, GISFI's IPR policy also does not indicate the specific steps to be taken in case an IPR owner refuses to license essential IPRs for which no alternative technology is available. This is true in the cases both, where the refusal is by a member, and, by a non-member. Our recommendations on the IPR policy of the TSDSI in paragraph B.4. of this submission (above), may also be considered for the GISFI's IPR policy.

B.6. According to the discussion paper, the IPR policy of the DOSTI resembles that of the GIFSI. It is submitted that these policies are similar in the context of refusal to license by a member or non-member, and, like the TSDSI and the GISFI, the DOSTI also requires the patent holder to license its IPR irrevocably on FRAND terms. Accordingly, we reiterate our comments on the IPR policy of the TSDSI in paragraph B.4. of this submission (above). The aforesaid recommendations may also be considered to be relevant for the DOSTI's IPR policy.

B.7. We are also of the opinion that it would be useful for Indian SSOs to consider recommending the use of royalty-free licenses for IPRs. Illustratively, the World Wide Web Consortium ("W3C") and the Open Mobile Alliance ("OMA") encourage royalty-free licensing.

c) Whether there is a need for prescribing guidelines on working and operation of Standard Setting Organizations by Government of India? If so, what all areas of working of SSOs should they cover?

C.1. In our opinion, in a milieu where instances of SEP litigation are becoming increasingly complex, and, there is a tangible threat of the abuse of the FRAND process, it might be useful for the Government of India to make suggestions on the working of Indian SSOs.

C.2. It is suggested that the Government of India develop Model Guidelines that may be adopted by Indian SSOs, taking into account India specific requirements, including the ones detailed in paragraph B.2. of this submission (above). We believe that this measure will also enable the fulfilment of the objectives of the Make in India and Digital India initiatives.

C.3. We recommend that various stakeholders, including IP holders, potential licensees and users of IP, civil society organizations, academics, and, government bodies, including the the Indian Patent Office ("IPO"), the Department of Telecommunications, the DIPP, TRAI, and, the CCI be consulted in the creation of these Model Guidelines.

C.4. In our opinion, the Model Guidelines may cover (a) the composition of the SSO; (b) the process of admitting members; (c) the process of the determination of a standard or technical specification; (d) the process of declassification of a standard or technical specification; (e) the IPR Policy; (f) resolution of disputes; (g) applicable law.

d) Whether there is a need for prescribing guidelines on setting or fixing the royalties in respect of Standard Essential Patents and defining FRAND terms by Government of India? If not, which would be appropriate authority to issue the guidelines and what could be the possible FRAND terms?

D.1. In light of the inadequacies in the IPR policies (discussed above) of various SSOs in India, as well the the spate of ongoing patent infringement lawsuits around mobile technologies, we recommend that the Government of India intervene in the setting of royalties and FRAND terms.

D.2. We propose that the Government of India initiate the formation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies and apply a compulsory license with a five per cent royalty. Further details of this proposal have been enumerated in answer to question 'f' of the discussion paper (below).

D.3. Our motivations for this proposal are many-fold. In our opinion, it is near-impossible for potential licensees to avoid inadvertent patent infringement. As a part of our ongoing research on technical standards applicable to mobile phones sold in India, we have found nearly 300 standards so far . It is submitted that carrying out patent searches for all the standards would be extremely expensive for potential licensees. Further, even if such searches were to be carried out, different patent owners, SSOs and potential licensees disagree on valuation, essentiality, enforceability, validity, and coverage of patents. In addition, some patent owners are non-practising entities ("NPEs") and may not be members of SSOs. The patents held by them are not likely to be disclosed. More importantly, home-grown manufacturers that have no patents to leverage and may be new entrants in the market would be especially disadvantaged by such a scenario. Budget phone manufacturers, standing to incur losses either as a result of heavy licensing fees, or, potential litigation, may close down. Alternatively, they may pass on their losses to consumers, driving the now-affordable phones out of their financial reach. With the objectives of Make in India and Digital India in sight, it is essential that Indian consumers continue to have access to devices within their purchasing power.

e) On what basis should the royalty rates in SEPs be decided? Should it be based on Smallest Saleable Patent Practicing Component (SSPPC), or on the net price of the Downstream Product, or some other criterion?

E.1. It is our submission that royalty rates for SEPs should be based on the smallest saleable patent practising component ("SSPPC"). Most modern telecommunication and IT devices are complex with numerous technologies working in tandem. Different studies indicate that the number of patents in the US applicable to smartphones is between 200,000 and 250,000. A comprehensive patent landscape of mobile device technologies conducted by CIS reveals that nearly 4,000 patents are applicable to mobile phones sold in India. It is thus extremely difficult to quantify the exact extent of interaction and interdependence between technologies in any device, in such a way that the exact contribution of the patented technology to the entire device can be determined.

E.2. The net cost of the device is almost always several times that of the chipset that implements the patented technology. Armstrong et al have found that the cost of a 4G baseband chip costs up to $20 including royalties in a hypothetical $400 phone sold in the US. One of the litigating parties in the ongoing patent infringement lawsuits in India has stated that one of the reasons for preferring to leverage its patents as downstream as possible in the value chain is that it will earn the company more royalties . In instances where patent exhaustion occurs much earlier in the value chain, such as in the case of the company's cross-licenses with Qualcomm (another company that owns patents to chip technologies), the company does not try to obtain royalties from the selling prices of devices for the cross-licensed technologies. It is submitted that such market practices could be detrimental to the government's objectives such as providing a mobile handset to every Indian by 2020 as a part of the Digital India programme . It is also worth noting in this context that the mobile device is the first and only medium of access to the Internet and telecom services for a large number of Indians, and, consequently, the only gateway to access to knowledge, information and critical services, including banking.

E.3. The discussion paper notes that J. Gregory Sidak, having studied the proceedings before the Delhi High Court, approved of the manner in which the court determined royalties. In his paper, Sidak(2015) notes that in determining royalties, the court relied, inter alia, on the decision of CSIRO v.Cisco ("the CSIRO case"), a 2015 decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 2015. We humbly disagree with the opinion of the Delhi High Court on the manner of determining royalties, and, with Sidak's approval of the same.

E.4. It is our submission that the CSIRO case relied on a previous judgment, which we disagree with. The decision, a 2014 district court judgment, analogises the determination of royalties on SEPs to the determination of royalties on a copyrighted book. The court notes, "[b]asing a royalty solely on chip price is like valuing a copyrighted book based only on the costs of the binding, paper, and ink needed to actually produce the physical product. While such a calculation captures the cost of the physical product, it provides no indication of its actual value." In our opinion, this analogy is flawed. While a book is a distinct product as a whole, a mobile phone is a sum-total of its parts. If at all, a mobile phone could be compared with a book with several authors, as multiple technologies belonging to several patent holders are implemented in it. This judgement bases valuation for one set of technologies on the whole device, thus awarding compensation to the licensor even for those technologies implemented in the device that are not related to the licensed technologies. In our opinion, charging royalty on the net selling price of a device for one technology or one set of technologies is thus more like a referral scheme and less like actual compensation for the value added. Accordingly, royalties must be charged on the SSPPC principle.

f) Whether total payment of royalty in case of various SEPs used in one product should be capped? If so, then should this limit be fixed by Government of India or some other statutory body or left to be decided among the parties?

F.1. CIS has proposed a compulsory licensing fee of five per cent on a patent pool of critical mobile technologies. The rationale for this figure is the royalty cap imposed by India in the early 1990s.

F.2. As part of regulating foreign technology agreements, the (former) Department of Industrial Development (later merged with the DIPP) capped royalty rates in the early 1990s. Payment of royalties was capped at either a lump sum payment of $2 million, or, 5 percent on the royalty rates charged for domestic sale, and, 8 percent for export of goods pertaining to "high priority industries". Royalties higher than 5 percent or 8 percent, as the case may be, required securing approval from the government.

F.3. While the early 1990s (specifically, 1991) was too early for the mobile device manufacturing industry to be listed among high priority industries, the public announcement by the government covered computer software, consumer electronics, and electrical and electronic appliances for home use. The cap on royalty rates was lifted by the DIPP in 2009.

F.4. It is submitted in the case of mobile device technology, we are witnessing a situation similar to that of the 1990s. In this sphere, most of the patent holders are multinational corporations which results in large royalty amounts leaving India. At the same time, in our opinion, litigation over patent infringement in India has limited the manufacture and sale of mobile devices of homegrown brands.

F.5. We believe that the aforementioned developments are detrimental to the Make in India and Digital India initiatives of the Government of India, and, the government's aim of encouraging local manufacturing, facilitating indigenous innovation, as well as strengthening India's intellectual property regime. It is our submission, therefore, that the payment of royalties on SEPs be capped.

F.6. We submit that such a measure is particularly important, given the nature of SEP litigation in India. While SEP litigation in India is indeed comparable to international SEP litigation on broader issues raised, specifically competition law concerns, but differs crucially where the parties are concerned. International SEP litigation is largely between multinational corporations with substantial patent portfolios, capable of engaging in long drawn out litigations, or engaging in other strategies including setting off against each other's patent portfolios. Dynamics in the Indian market differ - with a larger SEP holder litigating against smaller manufacturers, many of whom are indigenous, home-grown.

F.7. In June, 2013, we had recommended to the erstwhile Hon'ble Minister for Human Resource Development that a patent pool of essential technologies be established, with the compulsory licensing mechanism. Subsequently, in February, 2015, we reiterated this request to the Hon'ble Prime Minister. We propose that the Government of India initiate the formation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies and mandate a five percent compulsory license. As we have stated in our request to the Hon'ble Prime Minister, we believe that such a pool would "possibly avert patent disputes by ensuring that the owners' rights are not infringed on, that budget manufacturers are not put out of business owing to patent feuds, and that consumers continue to get access to inexpensive mobile devices. Several countries including the United States issue compulsory licenses on patents in the pharmaceutical, medical, defence, software, and engineering domains for reasons of public policy, or to thwart or correct anti-competitive practices."

F.8. We believe that such a measure is not in breach of our international obligations under the TRIPS Agreement.

g) Whether the practice of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) leads to misuse of dominant position and is against the FRAND terms?

G.1. The issue of Non Disclosure Agreements ("NDAs") in SEP/FRAND litigation is a contentious one. Patent holders argue that they are essential to the license negotiation process to protect confidential information, whereas potential licensees submit that NDAs result in the imposition of onerous conditions.

G.2. In India's SEP litigation, the use of NDAs has been raised as an issue in at least two cases - separately by Intex and by iBall , in their cases against Ericsson. Intex and iBall have both claimed that the NDAs that Ericsson asked them to sign were onerous, and favoured Ericsson.

G.3. According to Intex, the NDA in question would result in high legal costs for Intex, and, would render it unable to disclose crucial information to its vendors (who had agreed to supply to Intex on the condition that Intex was not infringing on any patents).

G.4. According to iBall, the parties had agreed to enter a global patent license agreement ("GPLA") but Ericsson insisted on an NDA. Upon receiving the terms of the NDA, iBall claimed before the CCI that Ericsson's refusal to identify the allegedly infringed SEPs; the threat of patent infringement proceedings; the attempt to coax iBall to enter into a "one-sided and onerous NDA"; the tying and bundling patents irrelevant to iBall's products by way of a GPLA; demanding unreasonably high royalties by way of a certain percentage value of handset as opposed to the cost of actual patented technology used all constituted abuse of Ericsson's dominant position under Section 4 of the Competition Act.

G.5. In India, the law on misuse (abuse) of dominant position by an 'enterprise' is found primarily in Section 4 of the Competition Act (read with Section 2(h) of the Competition Act, which defines 'enterprise'). In its recent decision in the Ericsson-CCI case , the Delhi High Court has found Ericsson to be an 'enterprise' for the purposes of the Competition Act, and hence subject to an inquiry under Section 4 of the same legislation. In the same decision, the court has also recognised the jurisdiction of the CCI to examine Ericsson's conduct for abuse of behaviour, based on complaints by Micromax and Intex. The use of NDAs is one of the grounds on which the parties have complained to the CCI.

G.6. Pending a final determination by the CCI (and subsequent appeals), it would be premature to make an absolute claim on whether the use of NDAs results in an abuse of dominant position in all instances. However, the following submissions are made: First, the determination of misuse/abuse of dominant position is influenced by a number of factors , i.e., such a determination should be made on a case to case basis. Second, the market regulator, the CCI, is best situated to determine (a) abuse of dominance, and (b) whether the use of NDAs by an enterprise constitutes an abuse of its dominance. Third, the question of whether the use of NDAs constitutes misuse of dominance needs to be addressed in two parts - (a) whether the use of the NDA itself is abusive, irrespective of its terms and, (b) whether the use of certain specific terms renders the NDA abusive. Fourth, NDAs could potentially lead to the patent owner abusing its dominant position in the market, as well as result in an invalidation of FRAND commitments and terms. NDAs make it impossible to determine if a patent holder is engaging in discriminatory licensing practices. Fifth, NDAs are especially harmful in the case of NPEs-- companies that hold patents and monetise them but don't build or manufacture the components or devices that implement the technology associated with the patents.

h) What should be the appropriate mode and remedy for settlement of disputes in matters related to SEPs, especially while deciding FRAND terms? Whether Injunctions are a suitable remedy in cases pertaining to SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms?

H.1. The licensing of SEPs on FRAND terms requires the parties to negotiate "reasonable" royalty rates in good faith, and apply the terms uniformly to all willing licensees. It is our submission that if the parties cannot agree to FRAND terms, they may enter into binding arbitration. Further, if all efforts fail, there exist remedies under the Patents Act and the Competition Act, 2002 to address the issues.

H.2. Section 115 of the Patents Act empowers the court to appoint an independent scientific adviser " to assist the court or to inquire and report upon any such question of fact or of opinion (not involving a question of interpretation of law) as it may formulate for the purpose. " Such an independent adviser may inform the court on the technical nuances of the matter.

H.3. Further, under the Patents Act, pending the decision of infringement proceedings the Court may provide interim relief, if the plaintiff proves first, a prima facie case of infringement; second, that the balance of convenience tilts in plaintiff's favour; and, third, that if an injunction is not granted the plaintiff shall suffer irreparable damage. H.4. However, it is our suggestion that courts adopt a more cautious stance towards granting injunctions in the field of SEP litigation. First, in our opinion, injunctions may prove to be a deterrent to arrive at a FRAND commitment, in particular, egregiously harming the willing licensee. Second, especially in the Indian scenario, where litigating parties operate in vastly different price segments (thereby targeting consumers with different purchasing power), it is difficult to establish that "irreparable damage" has been caused to the patent owner on account of infringement. Third, we note the approach of the European Court of Justice, which prohibited the patent holder from enforcing an injunction provided a willing licensee makes an offer for the price it wishes to pay to use a patent under the condition that it deposited an amount in the bank as a security for the patent holder. Fourth, we also note the approach of the Federal Trade Commission in the USA, which only authorizes patent holders to seek injunctive relief against potential licensees who have either stated that they will not license a patent on any terms, or refuse to enter into a license agreement on terms that have been set in the final ruling of a court or arbitrator. Further, as Contreras (2015) observes, that the precise boundaries of what constitutes as an unwilling licensee remains to be seen. We observe a similar ambiguity in Indian jurisprudence, and accordingly submit that courts should carefully examine the conduct of the licensee to injunct them from the alleged infringement.

i) What steps can be taken to make the practice of Cross-Licensing transparent so that royalty rates are fair & reasonable?

I.1. The Patents Act requires patentees and licensees to submit a statement on commercial working of the invention to the Controller every year. Form 27 under section 146(2) of the Act lists the details necessary to be disclosed for compliance of the requirement of "working". A jurisprudential analysis reveals the rationale and objective behind this mandatory requirement. Undeniably, the scheme of the Indian patent regime makes it amply clear that "working" is a very important requirement, and the public as well as competitors have a right to access this information in a timely manner, without undue hurdles. Indeed, as the decision in Natco Pharma v. Bayer Corporation reveals, the disclosures in Form 27 were crucial to determining the imposition of a compulsory license on the patentee. Thus, broadly, Form 27 disclosures can critically enable willing licensees to access patent "working" information in a timely manner.

I.2. However, there has been little compliance of this requirement by the patentees, despite the IPO reiterating the importance of compliance through the issuance of multiple public notices (suo motu and in response to a public interest litigation filed in 2011 ), and, reminding the patentees that non-compliance is punishable with a heavy fine. Findings of research submitted by one of the parties in the writ of the 2011 public interest litigationShamnad Basheer v. Union of India and others reveal as follows. First, a large number of Form 27s are unavailable for download from the website of the IPO. This possibly indicates that the forms have either not been filed by the patentees with the IPO, or have not been uploaded (yet) by the IPO. Second, a large number of filings in the telecom sector remain incomplete.

I.3. In 2015, CIS queried the IPO website for Form 27s of nearly 4,400 patents. CIS' preliminary research (ongoing and unpublished) echoes findings similar to the ones disclosed in the case discussed in paragraph I.2. of this submission (above).

I.4. In view of the submissions above, CIS makes the following recommendations to make the practice of cross-licensing transparent so that royalty rates are fair & reasonable: first, that there be a strict enforcement of the submission of Form 27s on a regular and timely basis by the patentees; and, second, that guidelines may be drawn up on whether it was discriminatory to charge no royalties (whether on the SSPPU or on the whole device) for a patent holder in a cross-licensing arrangement with another, when it charges royalty on the selling price of the device from a non-cross-licensor.

j) What steps can be taken to make the practice of Patent Pooling transparent so that royalty rates are fair & reasonable?

J.1. Patent pools can be understood as an agreement between two or more patent owners to license one or more of their patents to one another or to third parties. Thus, the creation of a patent pool makes use of the legal instrument of licensing, similar to the practice of cross-licensing. Insofar, we reiterate our recommendations made in paragraph I.3. of this submission (above), which apply to the answer to the instant question.

J.2. In furtherance of the recommendation above, we also propose the alteration of the Form 27 template to include more disclosures. Presently, patentees are required to to declare number of licensees and sub-licensees. We specifically propose that the format of Form 27 filings be modified to include patent pool licenses, with an explicit declaration of the names of the licensees and not just the number.

J.3. It is also our submission that patent pools be required to offer FRAND licenses on the same terms to both members and non-members of the pool.

k) How should it be determined whether a patent declared as SEP is actually an Essential Patent, particularly when bouquets of patents are used in one device?

K.1. We submit that several studies on the essentiality of SEPs indicate that only a small percentage of SEPs are actually essential. A study conducted byGoodman and Myers (2004) showed that only 21% of SEPs pertaining to the 3G standard in the US were deemed to be actually essential. Another study conducted by the same authors in 2009 for WCDMA patents showed that 28% SEPs were essential.

K.2. In our opinion, first, the methodology adopted by Goodman and Myers could be replicated to determine the "essential" nature of an SEP. Second, while adopting their methodology, it would be useful to address some of the issues over which these studies were critiqued. Accordingly, we suggest that (a) laboratory tests may be conducted by an outside expert or by a commercial testing laboratory, and not at an in-house facility owned by either parties, so as to eliminate in the lab results; and, (b) expert opinions may be considered in order to determine essentiality.

l) Whether there is a need of setting up of an independent expert body to determine FRAND terms for SEPs and devising methodology for such purpose?

L.1. In our opinion, there is no need for an independent expert body to determine FRAND terms for SEPs and devising the methodology for such a purpose. The existing legal and regulatory framework is reasonably equipped to determine FRAND terms. A more detailed submission on the existing framework and suggested changes has been made in our answer to question 'a' of the discussion paper (above).

L.2. However, we observe that Indian courts, tribunals and the CCI are yet to endorse a methodology for making FRAND determinations. The judgments of the Delhi High Court do not provide a conclusive rationale or methodology for the imposition of royalty rates in the respective matters.

L.3. We submit that in the absence of definitive Indian jurisprudence for determination of FRAND terms, American jurisprudence provides certain guidance. Contreras (2015) informs us about the various case law American courts and regulators have developed and adhered to whilst making such determinations.The dominant analytical framework for determining "reasonable royalty" patent damages in the United States today was set out in 1970 by the District Court for the Southern District of New York in Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. U.S. Plywood Corp . While this may be used as a guiding framework, the question of methodology remains far from settled.

m) If certain Standards can be met without infringing any particular SEP, for instance by use of some alternative technology or because the patent is no longer in force, what should be the process to declassify such a SEP?

M.1. In our opinion, if a standard can be met without infringing a patent declared to be "essential" to it, then the patent is not actually "essential". In this instance, the methods suggested in response to question 'k' of the discussion paper (above) could be used to declassify the SEP.

M.2. We further submit that if a patent is no longer in force, that is, if it has expired, then it ceases to be patent, and therefore an SEP. The process to declassify such an SEP could be simply to declare it an expired patent.

M.3. In addition, if it is possible to implement a certain standard by using an alternative technology, then the SEP for such a standard is not actually an SEP. However, the scale of operations and that of mass manufacturing and compatibility requirements in devices and infrastructure mean that it is unlikely to have different methods of implementing the same standard.

M.4. In general, it is our submission that an Indian SSO could maintain a publicly accessible database of SEPs found to be invalid or non-essential in India.

7. We reiterate our gratitude to the DIPP for the opportunity to make these submissions. In addition to our comments above, we have shared some of our research on this issue, in the 'Annexures', below.

8. It would be our pleasure and privilege to discuss these comments with the DIPP; and, supplement these with further submissions if necessary. We also offer our assistance on other matters aimed at developing a suitable policy framework for SEPs and FRAND in India, and, working towards the sustained innovation, manufacture and availability of mobile technologies in India.

On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, 22 April, 2016

Anubha Sinha - anubha@cis-india.org | Nehaa Chaudhari - nehaa@cis-india.org

Rohini Lakshané - rohini@cis-india.org

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ANNEXURES

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● Anubha Sinha, Fuelling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-asia-hub-the-good-life-in-asias-21-st-century-anubha-sinha-fueling-the-affordable-smartphone-revolution-in-india (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Nehaa Chaudhari, Standard Essential Patents on Low-Cost Mobile Phones in India: A Case to Strengthen Competition Regulation?, available at http://www.manupatra.co.in/newsline/articles/Upload/08483340-C1B9-4BA4-B6A9-D6B6494391B8.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Nehaa Chaudhari, Pervasive Technologies:Patent Pools, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-pools (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Nehaa Chaudhari, The Curious Case of the CCI:Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India, presented at the 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-curious-case-of-the-cci-competition-law-and-sep-regulation-in-indi a (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Nehaa Chaudhari, Letter for Establishment of Patent Pool for Low Cost Access Devices through Compulsory Licences, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/letter-for-establishment-of-patent-pool-for-low-cost-access-devices (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Prof Jorge L. Contreras and Rohini Lakshané, Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2756486 (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Rohini Lakshané, CIS, List of technical standards and IP types (Working document), available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8SgjShAjhbtaml5eW50bS01d2s/view?usp=sharing (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Rohini Lakshané, Open Letter to Prime Minister Modi, February 2015, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-prime-minister-modi (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Rohini Lakshané, FAQ: CIS' proposal to form a patent pool of critical mobile technology, September 2015, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/faq-cis-proposal-for-compulsory-licensing-of-critical-mobile-technologies (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Rohini Lakshané, Joining the dots in India's big-ticket mobile phone patent litigation, May 2015, last updated October 2015, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/joining-the-dots-in-indias-big-ticket-mobile-phone-patent-litigation (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Rohini Lakshané, Compilation of Mobile Phone Patent Litigation Cases in India, March 2015, last updated April 2016, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/compilation-of-mobile-phone-patent-litigation-cases-in-india , (last accessed April 22, 2016).

● Rohini Lakshané, Patent landscaping in the Indian Mobile Device Marketplace, presented at the 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest, December 2015, available at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8SgjShAjhbtME45N245SmowOGs (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

● Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva, Patent Valuation and Licence Fee Determination in the Context of Patent Pools, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-valuation-and-license-fee-determination-in-context-of-patent-pools (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

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This submission has been authored by (alphabetically) Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshané, on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, India.

See The Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis-india.org (last accessed 22 April, 2016) for details of the organization, and, our work.

Make in India, available at http://www.makeinindia.com/home (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Digital India, available at http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/ (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

See Nehaa Chaudhari, The Curious Case of the CCI:Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India, presented at the 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-curious-case-of-the-cci-competition-law-and-sep-regulation-in-india (last accessed 21 April, 2016) for further details on relevant provisions.

In the High Court of Delhi, W.P.(C) 464/2014 & CM Nos. 911/2014 & 915/2014, judgment delivered on 30 March, 2016. Hereafter referred to as the Ericsson-CCI judgment.

Id.

Under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India, and, under Article 32 of the Constitution of India, for the High Courts and the Supreme Court, respectively.

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, available at https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm0_e.htm (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

KEI Staff, 2015 October 15 version: RCEP IP Chapter, available at http://keionline.org/node/2472 (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

BIS Act, 2016, available at http://www.bis.org.in/bs/bsindex.asp (last accessed 21 April, 2016).

TSDSI, Intellectual Property Rights Policy, available at http://www.tsdsi.org/media/Help/2014-12-17/TSDSI-PLD-40-V1.0.0-20141217.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Id at Clause 3.1.

Id at Clause 5.1.

Id at Clause 5.2.

Id at Clause 5.5.

Id at Clauses 7.1. and 7.2.

Id at Clause 7.2.1.a (iii).

Id at Clause 7.2.1.b(iii).

Id at Clause 7.3.

GISFI, Intellectual Property Rights Policy, available at http://www.gisfi.org/ipr_policy/gisfi_intellectual_property_righ.htm (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Id at Clauses 6.2.1.a(iii) and 6.2.1.b(iii).

See W3C, Patent Policy, available at https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/ (last accessed 22 April, 2016) for more details on their royalty-free licences.

See OMA, Use Agreement, available at http://openmobilealliance.org/about-oma/policies-and-terms-of-use/use-agreement/ (last accessed 22 April, 2016) for more details on their royalty-free licences.

See Rohini Lakshané, Open Letter to PM Modi, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-prime-minister-modi (last accessed 22 April, 2016) for further details of CIS' proposal.

Rohini Lakshané, CIS, List of Technical Standards and IP Types (Working document), available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8SgjShAjhbtaml5eW50bS01d2s/view?usp=sharing (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Mark Lemley and Carl Shapiro, Patent Holdup and Royalty Stacking, 85 Tex. L. Rev. at 2015; See also, for e.g., RPX Corporation, Amendment No. 3 to Form S-l, 11 Apr. 2011, at 59, available at http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1509432/000119312511101007/ds1a.htm (last accessed 22 April, 2016), quoting - "Based on our research, we believe there are more than 250,000 active patents relevant to today's smartphones…".; See further Steve Lohr, Apple- Samsung Case Shows Smartphone as Legal Magnet, New York Times, 25 Aug. 2012, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/technology/apple-samsung-case-shows-smartphone-as-lawsuit-magnet.html (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Jorge L. Contreras and Rohini Lakshané, Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2756486 (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Ann Armstrong, Joseph J. Mueller and Timothy D. Syrett, The Smartphone- Royalty Stack:Surveying Royalty Demands for the Components Within Modern Smartphones, available at https://www.wilmerhale.com/uploadedFiles/Shared_Content/Editorial/Publications/Documents/The-Smartphone-Royalty-Stack-Armstrong-Mueller-Syrett.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Florian Mueller, Ericsson Explained Publicly why it Collects Patent Royalties from Device (Not Chipset) Makers, available at http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/01/ericsson-explained-publicly-why-its.html (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Romit Guha and Anandita Singh Masinkotia, PM Modi's Digital India Project:Government to Ensure that Every Indian has a Smartphone by 2019, available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-25/news/53205445_1_digital-india-india-today-financial-services (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Nehaa Chaudhari, Standard Essential Patents on Low-Cost Mobile Phones in India: A Case to Strengthen Competition Regulation?, available at http://www.manupatra.co.in/newsline/articles/Upload/08483340-C1B9-4BA4-B6A9-D6B6494391B8.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

See part 10.2.2. of the Discussion Paper, at page 25.

J.Gregory Sidak, FRAND in India:The Delhi High Court's Emerging Jurisprudence on Royalties for Standard-Essential Patents, available at http://jiplp.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/06/11/jiplp.jpv096.full (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in No. 6:11-cv-00343-LED, decided on 03 December, 2015, available at. http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/15-1066.Opinion.12-1-2015.1.PDF (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Id.

Kumkum Sen, News on Royalty Payments Brings Cheer in New Year, available at http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/news-on-royalty-payment-brings-cheer-in-new-year-110010400044_1.html (last accessed 21 April, 2016).

See Sanjana Govil, Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows- How the RBI Can Help Reduce India's IP Costs, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows (last accessed 21 April, 2016), for a discussion on the introduction of royalty caps in the early 1990s, and its success in reducing the flow of money out of India.

Supra note 33.

Nehaa Chaudhari, Letter for Establishment of Patent Pool for Low-cost Access Devices through Compulsory Licenses, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/letter-for-establishment-of-patent-pool-for-low-cost-access-devices (last accessed 21 April, 2016).

Supra note 26.

Rohini Lakshané, FAQ: CIS' proposal to form a patent pool of critical mobile technology, September 2015, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/faq-cis-proposal-for-compulsory-licensing-of-critical-mobile-technologies (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Id.

See the Ericsson-CCI case, supra note 6, for Intex's submissions as discussed by Justice Bakhru.

Id.

Rohini Lakshané, Compilation of Mobile Phone Patent Litigation Cases in India, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/compilation-of-mobile-phone-patent-litigation-cases-in-india (last accessed 21 April, 2016).

See the Ericsson-CCI case, supra note 6, at paragraph 19.2.

Supra note 47.

See the Ericsson-CCI judgment, supra note 6, at paragraphs 88-105.

Section 19(4) of the Competition Act. See also Competition Commission of India v. Steel Authority of India and Another, (2010) 10 SCC 744.

Section 115 of the Patents Act, 1970.

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd v. ZTE Corp. and ZTE Deutschland, Judgment of the Court (Fifth Chamber) of 16 July 2015 in GmbH C-170/13.

Third Party United States Fed. Trade Commission's Statement on the Public Interest, In re Certain Wireless Communication Devices, Portable Music and Data Processing Devices, Computers and Components Thereof, U.S. Int'l Trade Comm'n, Inv. No. 337-TA-745 (Jun. 6, 2012).

Jorge L. Contreras, A Brief History of FRAND: Analyzing Current Debates in Standard Setting and Antitrust Through a Historical Lens, 80 Antitrust Law Journal 39 (2015), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2374983 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2374983 (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Section 146(2) of the Patents Act, 1970..

Sai Vinod, Patent Office Finally Takes Form 27s Seriously, available at http://spicyip.com/2013/02/patent-office-finally-takes-form-27s.html (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Order No. 45/2013 (Intellectual Property Appellate Board, Chennai), available at http://www.ipab.tn.nic.in/045-2013.htm (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Intellectual Property India, Public Notice, available at http://www.ipindia.nic.in/iponew/publicNotice_Form27_12Feb2013.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016) and Intellectual Property India, Public Notice, available at http://ipindia.nic.in/iponew/publicNotice_24December2009.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Supra note 57.

Id.

See research findings available at http://spicyip.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FORM-27-WP-1R-copy.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

In the High Court of Delhi, W.P.(C) 5590/2015. This litigation is currently ongoing. See, illustratively, Mathews P. George, Patent Working in India: Delhi HC issues notice in Shamnad Basheer v. Union of India & Ors. - I, available at http://spicyip.com/2015/09/patent-working-in-india-delhi-hc-issues-notice-in-shamnad-basheer-v-union-of-india-ors-i.html (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

In response to an RTI request made to the IPO in Mumbai for forms unavailable on the website, CIS received a reply stating, "As thousand [sic] of Form -27 are filed in this office, it is very difficult to segregate Form-27 for the patent numbers enlisted in your RTI application as it needs diversion of huge official staff/ manpower and it will affect day to day [sic] work of this office." This research is ongoing and unpublished. Please contact us for a copy of the RTI application and the response received.

WIPO Secretariat, Patent Pools and Antitrust - A Comparative Analysis, available at https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wipo.int%2Fexport%2Fsites%2Fwww%2Fip-competition%2Fen%2Fstudies%2Fpatent_pools_report.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Form 27, The Patents Act, available at http://ipindia.nic.in/ipr/patent/manual/HTML%20AND%20PDF/Manual%20of%20Patent%20Office%20Practice%20and%20Procedure%20-%20html/Forms/Form-27.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

David J. Goodman and Robert A. Myers, 3G Cellular Standards and Patents, available at http://patentlyo.com/media/docs/2009/03/wirelesscom2005.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Darien CT, Review of Patents Declared as Essential to WCDMA through December, 2008, available at http://www.frlicense.com/wcdma1.pdf (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Supra note 67.

Donald L. Martin and Carl De Meyer, Patent Counting, a Misleading Index of Patent Value: A Critique of Goodman & Myers and its Uses, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=949439 (last accessed 22 April, 2016).

Rohini Lakshané, Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone Patent Litigation, available at http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/joining-the-dots-in-indias-big-ticket-mobile-phone-patent-litigation (last accessed 22 April, 2016). See also supra note 47 for more details.

Supra note 55.

318 F. Supp. 1116, 1120 (S.D.N.Y. 1970), modified and aff'd, 446 F. 2d 295 (2d Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 870 (1971).

2015

They filed it in 2011

The 2011 filing only includes pharma, BTW: http://spicyip.com/docs/Form%2027s.pdf. Also, this writ is from May 2015: http://spicyip.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FORM-27-WP-1R-copy.pdf Anyway, I'll leave it as it is.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-department-of-industrial-policy-and-promotion-discussion-paper-on-standard-essential-patents-and-their-availability-on-frand-terms

T’puram to host Wikipedia workshop on May 4, 5

praskrishna — 2016-05-01T14:01:24Z

The workshop will be led by Prof. Madav Gadgil and a team of experienced Wikipedia editors.

Thiruvananthapuram: The Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre jointly with the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikipedia fraternity of Kerala, is conducting a two-day workshop on Wikipedia from 4 to 5 May at the Vakkom Moulavi Foundation Trust Hall, Thekkinmoodu. The workshop will provide guidance as how to contribute contents on Kerala or to translate pages in English on Kerala in the Wikipedia encyclopaedia. The workshop will be led by Prof. Madhav Gadgil and a team of experienced Wikipedia editors.

This article was published in Mathrubhumi on May 1, 2016. Read the full article here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/mathrubhumi-may-1-2016-thiruvananthapuram-to-host-wikipedia-workshop-on-may-4-5

April 2016 Newsletter

sunil — 2016-05-10T06:26:09Z

Welcome to the CIS newsletter for April 2016. The key issues we worked on this month included the Aadhaar Act 2016, Standard Essential Patents, cyber security of smart grids, and involvement of international agencies in the smart cities project in India.

Early last year, thanks to the fund raising efforts of a friend of CIS - Suhail Kazi, we received Rs. 1.9 lakhs as donations from 19 individuals. In January this year, we set up an online giving feature on our website which would ease the donation process, but we haven’t got a single donation so far! This could be because many of you may be under a false impression that CIS is very wealthy and does not need more support. Unfortunately, this is no longer true. Today, we are unable to find a single donor who is interested in our Accessibility, Telecom, or RAW programmes. In other words, we need your support. Would you to consider making a small donation to CIS? Click here to donate.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
CIS prepared an FAQ on the Aadhaar / UIDAI project and the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. Further, two infographics were produced to highlight on the questions of "Can the Aadhaar Act 2016 be Classified as a Money Bill?" and "Can the Matters Dealt with in the Aadhaar Act be the Objects of a Money Bill?". NVDA team prepared a report on the progress of the project for the month of April 2016. CIS submitted its comments to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion's Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and their Availability on FRAND Terms. CIS has offered its assistance on other matters aimed at developing a suitable policy framework for SEPs and FRAND in India, and, working towards the sustained innovation, manufacture and availability of mobile technologies in India. A summary of the comments can be accessed here. Responses to the Discussion Paper is available here. Rohini Lakshané's paper titled Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey has been accepted for publication by the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. Kiran A.B. in a blog post has documented the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. Low-cost Aakash tablet and its previous iterations in India have gone through several phases of technological changes and ideological experiments wrote Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Jahnavi Phalkey in an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly.

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CIS in the News
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CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

India's biometric database crosses billion-member mark (AFP and Daily Mail, UK; April 4, 2016).
The Panama Papers and the question of privacy (Big News Network; April 6, 2016). This was originally published by Privacyinternational.org.
Daunting task ahead for investigative agencies with WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; April 8, 2016).
PMO’s no to smart cards, insists on Aadhaar (Somesh Jha; Hindu; April 10, 2016).
2014 showed the power of Twitter, now every Indian politician wants a handle (T.V. Jayan, Smitha Verma,Sonia Sarkar and V. Kumara Swamy; Telegraph; April 10, 2016).
Why is the UIDAI cracking down on individuals that hoard Aadhaar data? (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; April 13, 2016).
You will need a license to create a WhatsApp group in Kashmir (Governance Now; April 19, 2016).
Will Facebook, Twitter relocate servers to India? (Taru Bhatia; Governance Now; April 23, 2016).
Government keeps experts out of cyber security discussions (Amrita Madhukalya; DNA; April 23, 2016).
CCTV plays Sherlock (Raj Shekhar, Arun Dev, V Narayan & A Selvaraj with inputs from Sindhu Kannan and Somreet Bhattacharya; The Times of India; April 24, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following pieces:

Sunil Abraham wrote an article in the July 15 edition of Frontline arguing that the Aadhaar project’s technological design and architecture is an unmitigated disaster and no amount of legal fixes in the Act will make it any better.
Amber Sinha wrote an article in The Wire arguing that the Aaddhaar Act is not a money bill, and the Supreme Court may very well question the decision by the Lok Sabha speaker to classify it as such.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay also wrote on The Wire arguing that "the last chance for a welfare state doesn’t rest in the Aadhaar system."
Subhashish Panigrahi's article on the 8 challenges that Indian language Wikipedias have to overcome was published by Global Voices. The article had earlier been published in the Wire.
Elonnai Hickok and Vanya Rakesh co-authored an article on Cyber Security of Smart Grids in India that was published by Dataquest.
Shyam Ponappa in his monthly column published in the Business Standard tell us that it's time the government accepts that current policies are not enough to bring about Digital India.

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Comments

Comments on Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and their Availability on Frand Terms (Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshané; April 23, 2016).
Responses to the DIPP's Discussion Paper on SEPs and their Availability on FRAND Terms (Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshané; April 23, 2016).
Summary of CIS Comments to DIPP’s Discussion Paper on SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms (Anubha Sinha; April 26, 2016).

Blog Entries

Global Congress 2015 - A Collection of Resources (Pervasive Technologies Team; April 1, 2016).
Compilation of Mobile Phone Patent Litigation Cases in India (Rohini Lakshané; updated on April 15, 2016).
Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone Patent Litigation (Rohini Lakshané; updated on April 29, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Tezpur University (Karan Tripathi; April 26, 2016).
National IPR Policy Series : Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama; April 30, 2016). Nisha S. Kumar assisted in compilation of the document.

Participation in Events

Fifth Annual IP Teaching Workshop (Organised by the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition at National Law University Delhi in association with National Academy of Law Teaching, NLU-D; Delhi; March 31 and April 1, 2016). Nehaa Chaudhari was a speaker.
First Round-table on Innovation, IP and Competition (Organized by the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property & Competition (CIIPC) at the National Law University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre; New Delhi; April 1-2, 2016). Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha attended the round-table.
Brainstorming Workshop on PG Programme on Media Studies for UGC E-Pathshala Programme (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia; New Delhi; April 5, 2016).
Sensitization Seminar on IPR for Electronics & ICT Sectors (Organized by Andhra Pradesh Technology Development & Promotion Centre (APTDC) of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in association with Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY); Vishakhapatnam; April 21, 2016).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Work Plan

CIS - A2K Work Plan: July 2016 - June 2017 (CIS-A2K Team; April 2, 2016): We have revised the work plan template taking into account the changed proposal plan sent out by WMF and in light of the feedback that we have received from FDC assessment during last proposal application. The FDC feedback is taken into account at the level of design, RoI and ensuring quality for all our activities.

Article

Eight Challenges Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; April 21, 2016). A version of this post was previously published on The Wire.

Media Coverage

Odia gets more space in e-world (Anwesha Ambaly; The Telegraph; April 7, 2016).
Exercise to Correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins (Raviprasad Kamila; The Hindu; April 28, 2016).

Event Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Editathon to Improve Quality of Articles in Tulu Wikipedia (Shri Ramakrishna PU College; Mangaluru; April 26 - 30, 2016).

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Openness
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Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II) (Kiran A.B.; April 12, 2016).

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Cyber Security

Cyber Security of Smart Grids in India (Elonnai Hickok and Vanya Rakesh; April 25, 2016).

►Big Data

Blog Entry

RTI regarding Smart Cities Mission in India (Paul Thottan; April 21, 2016).

►Privacy

Blog Entries

FAQ on the Aadhaar Project and the Bill (Elonnai Hickok, Vanya Rakesh, and Vipul Kharbanda; April 13, 2016).
Aadhaar Act and its Non-compliance with Data Protection Law in India (Vanya Rakesh; April 14, 2016).
Can the Matters Dealt with in the Aadhaar Act be the Objects of a Money Bill? (Pooja Saxena; April 24, 2016).

Articles

Will Aadhaar Act Address India’s Dire Need For a Privacy Law? (Nehaa Chaudhari; Quint; March 31, 2016).
The Last Chance for a Welfare State Doesn’t Rest in the Aadhaar System (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; April 19, 2016).
The Aadhaar Act is Not a Money Bill (Amber Sinha; April 25, 2016).

Participation in Events

RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016 (Organized by RightsCon; March 31 and April 1, 2016). Elonnai Hickok attended the event.
Panel Discussion on UID/ Aadhar act 2016 and its impact on Social, Security (Organized by Students Christian Movement of India at SCM House; Bangalore; April 25, 2016). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
The Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), organised a roundtable discussion on Tuesday, April 26, to discuss the Aadhaar project and Act. Along with Prasanna S, Apar Gupta, and Dr. Chirashree Dasgupta, Sumandro Chattapadhyay was one of the discussants.
Aadhaar by Numbers (Organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; New Delhi; April 29, 2016). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

Breakthroughs Needed For Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; April 6, 2016 and Organizing India BlogSpot; April 7, 2016).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Article

Buying into the Aakash Dream - A Tablet’s Tale of Mass Education (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Jahnavi Phalkey; Economic & Political Weekly; April 23, 2016).

Announcement

Call for Proposal: Big Data for Development – Initial Field Studies (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; April 29, 2016).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2016-newsletter

National IPR Policy Series : Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses

Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama — 2016-05-03T05:32:01Z

CIS filed an RTI application on August 11, 2015, seeking information regarding the functioning of the Sectoral Innovation Council (SInC) on Intellectual Property Rights. This posts documents the responses received.

Nisha S Kumar assisted in the compilation of this document.

For our earlier post on this issue, see here

The RTI application can be accessed here. The SInC on IPR had 12 members from various stakeholder groups including academicians, research organizations, industries and the government. There were no members on behalf of civil society organizations of non-governmental organizations. The manner and the basis on which these members were selected has not been disclosed.

SInC Meeting 1: September 7, 2011

The list of attendees is available in the file ‘Office Memorandum and list of Members of SInC on IPR’

Attendance

A meeting for the SInC on IPR was held on September 7, 2011 under the chairmanship of the DIPP. This meeting was attended by only 9 members out of 12. Amongst those absent were Dr. Ranbir Singh (National Law University, Delhi), Prof. Govardhan Mehta (IISc, Bangalore) and Mr. Soshil Kumar Jain (Panacea Biotec). Additionally, organizations such as IIT, Delhi and BHEL and Tata Motors were represented by members different from the ones on the original list of members.

Agenda

The agenda and minutes of the meeting are available here.

The meeting had three items on the agenda – developing a framework for the National IPR policy, discussion on utility models and co-opting knowledge partners or research institutions for preparation of draft report.

i. Developing a framework for the National IPR strategy

Members were called to give their views and suggestions on the National IPR strategy. Firstly, it was unanimously submitted that measures to increase innovation in the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector had to be adopted. Different means for the same were suggested, such as improving access to databases on patents and non-patents literature, development of product catalogues by SME clusters and making low-cost technology available to SMEs through government acquisition.

Secondly, development of expertise to file pre-grant opposition for preventing grant of frivolous patents was emphasized upon.

The members also agreed on identifying ‘white spaces’ that were lacking in innovation.

Finally, the members stressed on introducing a course on IPR in the curriculum of technical and post graduate/research programmes in science.

Action point – all members were required to prepare a position paper on the framework of the national IPR strategy within 1 month of the issue of the minutes by the DIPP.

It was suggested that the framework should include the philosophy for a National IPR strategy, objectives to encourage IP, measures for modernizing IP offices and interventions for promoting commercialization of IP. The draft framework can be accessed here.

ii. Discussion on utility models

The utility model framework can be accessed here.

It was agreed that the utility models should be protected through a separate legal framework. The maximum period of protection would be 8 years and the number of claims would be limited to 5. However, members agreed that this should not lead to evergreening of patents. Utility models will be covered in detail in a subsequent post.

iii. Co-opting knowledge partner/research institutions for preparation of draft report

Preparation of a National IPR strategy would require a detailed study of the present IPR scenario and its different aspects.

Action point – National Law School, Bangalore, was co-opted as the knowledge partner for preparing the draft report.

SInC Meeting 2: February 10, 2012

The agenda, office memorandum, list of participants and minutes of the meeting are available here.

Two different lists of attendees submitted in response to the RTI application (found here and here). As per both the lists, all the members were not present at the meeting and several organizations were represented by members different from the ones on the original Council.

The items on the agenda were –

Action taken after meeting 1;
Inputs for draft National IPR strategy; and,
Discussion paper on Utility Models

i. Action taken after meeting 1

The DIPP decided to take care of the administrative infrastructure of the IPR management in the country. The members were asked to give suggestions on the aspects of acquisition, protection and commercialization of IPRs.

It had been decided at the previous meeting that the position papers on the National IPR strategy were to be submitted within 1 month of the release of the minutes. However, only 4 members had given inputs. The remaining members were requested to expedite the same.

Also, National Law School, Bangalore, was unable to contribute to the preparation of the draft National IPR strategy. Hence IIT Delhi was co-opted as the alternate knowledge partner for the same.

ii. Inputs for the draft National IPR strategy

Several submissions were made by the members. Briefly, some of these were –

Diagnosis of reasons for not opting of registration of IPRs by SMEs;
Policy guidelines for the MOUs to be signed between the government and research institutions in case of government funding;
Need for DIPP to come up with policy on IPR ownership and management in case of government funding.

The members also supported the inclusion of a policy in the National IPR strategy to promote commercialization of innovations by individuals, SMEs and public sector units (PSUs).

iii. Discussion paper on Utility Models

Members were of the opinion that a utility model framework should be introduced to encourage individuals and SMEs to innovate. They were requested to expedite their inputs on the draft legal framework for utility models that had been circulated to them (available here).

The date of the next meeting was decided as March 22, 2012.

SInC Meeting 3: August 21, 2012

The office memorandum, list of participants and minutes of the meeting can be accessed here.

Instead of the date decided at the previous meeting, the next meeting was held on August 21, 2012, 5 months after the scheduled date.

Mr. N. K. Sabharwal was added to the list of members of the SInC on IPR. The grounds and procedure of the addition have not been made available. The new list of members is available here. The list of attendees for meeting 3 was not provided.

The agenda of the meeting was to discuss the draft National IPR strategy prepared by the DIPP on the basis of the comments received from the members of the Council. It is unclear if the remaining members also submitted their comments, as was requested in the previous meeting.

Some of the issues discussed were –

i. Adapting the draft National IPR strategy prepared by DIPP to the local conditions and developmental needs of the country – suggestions such as instituting an IP depository for technologies used in development of products and maintaining a dossier of judicial decisions on IPRs were made.

ii. Reviewing provisions for transfer of IPRs, including a restriction on transfer from an individual to a company.

iii. Making traditional knowledge (TK) of the country accessibly to universities and research institutions – it was suggested that a register should be maintained products developed on the basis of TK. Also, patents granted by the Indian Patent Office should be informed to universities and institutions for capacity building.

iv. Creating a fast tracking system for registration of green technology patents – the suggestion for a fast tracking system for green technology was supported and a similar system was prescribed for food technology.

v. Establishing an incubation fund to assist in research and development and acquisition of IPRs – SMEs would be given access to a patent pool and would be reimbursed up to Rs. 20 lakh for costs incurred in technology acquisition.

It was noted that the suggestions all pertained to the execution of the strategy. Members were requested to furnish suggestions regarding the strategy to the government. The draft strategy would be modified on the basis of the comments received from the members of the Council. It was also decided that the draft paper would be hosted on the website of the DIPP by the third week of September, 2012, for seeking inputs from stakeholders.

The Secretary (IPP) also suggested that the SInC on IPRs be reconstituted to include representatives from the industry and academia. The need for this is unclear since the industry (BHEL, Panacea, Bilcare) and academia (IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore, NLU Delhi) were already represented in the Council.

SInC Meeting 4: April 30, 2013

The list of attendees and the minutes of the meeting can be found here.

The Council had not been reconstituted despite the recommendation of the Secretary in the previous meeting.

Merely 6 members out of the total 12 were present for the meeting. Of these, certain organizations, such as BHEL, were also represented by people who had been not been present at any of the past meetings. It was agreed that members would not send representatives for future meetings since they had been nominated by their names. This had been a recurring problem in all the meetings so far.

The agenda of the meeting was to discuss the draft IPR strategy and steps that needed to be taken further.

The draft had been prepared on the basis of the comments received from the members and the specific inputs of Mr. Sabharwal. Whether comments had been received from all the members, as had been decided in meeting 1, is unclear. Furthermore, there was no mention of the comments received from stakeholders after the draft paper had been published online in September 2012.

The following decisions were reached by the SInC –

i. The strategy document needed to be improved and made comprehensive to include IP issues relating to information technology, copyright, TK, plant variety protection, etc.

ii. The members were required to suggest 10 monetary and non-monetary incentives for harnessing creativity. The figure seems arbitrarily decided and there is no explanation for how this would affect the draft strategy itself.

iii. BHEL was to prepare a paper on schemes being implemented in the country for promoting innovation.

iv. The draft paper would be circulated after finalization. Thereafter, a two-year plan would be formulated to operationalize the IPR strategy.

Government Meeting 1: June 18, 2013

An office memorandum was sent stating that a meeting to discuss the improvement required in the draft National IPR strategy was scheduled to be held on June 18, 2013. Since no details about the meeting were sent, whether the meeting actually took place and what was discussed in unknown. The office memorandum is available here.

The entire National IPR strategy can be read here.

Government Meeting 2: July 29, 2013

List of attendees and minutes of meeting here.

The meeting was held to make the National IPR strategy more comprehensive so that it could have a larger coverage. The meeting was attended by representatives of various government departments and ministries, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the SInC on IPR, which was represented by N. K. Sabharwal. A plethora of disconnected issues were flagged out. It was mentioned that concerns related to TK such as transboundary issues, sui-generis system for protection of TK and biopiracy should be incorporated into the strategy. It was also proposed that an Act for public funding of R&D should be introduced to foster innovation. Inclusion of a brief module on IPR in high school curriculums was recommended.

The participants were requested to furnish comments in a written form to DIPP within a week of the meeting.

SInC Meeting 5: October 9, 2013

Agenda and minutes are available here.

Despite agreeing in meeting 4 that the future meetings would be attended by the members personally, only 6 members were present. Organizations such as National Innovation Council, IIT Delhi and BHEL were represented by people other than the members of the SInC.

There were four items on the agenda –

i. Finalization of the draft National IPR strategy – paragraphs pertaining to setting up a National IP Enforcement Task Force and creating a formal legal regime for protection of trade secrets were removed. The statement mandating organizations to align their innovation strategies to national requirements was also removed.

ii. Work-plan for 2013-15 under the IPR strategy – no discussion on this in the minutes.

iii. Suggestions on monetary and non-monetary incentives for innovation – paper on incentive mechanisms to be prepared by BHEL is available here.

iv. Issues of time period for renewal of strategy and establishing a committee to review the implementation of the strategy – no discussion on this in the minutes.

Additionally, the members were asked to provide textual contributions to the document within 10 days of the meeting to enable its finalization.

Response to Queries Raised in the RTI Application (available here)

Q1. How many meetings has the SInC held since establishment?

DIPP: 5

Q2. Please supply minutes and all related documents of all its meetings.

Provided by the DIPP and have been attached through the post above.

Q3. How much are the members of the SInC paid? Are members paid on the basis of time or number of meetings held?

DIPP: One member, Dr. Karuna Jain, was reimbursed R. 18,374/- for attending the SInC meeting on August 21, 2012.

The response, quite clearly, does not answer the question asked.

Q4. Has the SInC done any work or produced any outputs other than the 2012 draft of the National IPR strategy?

DIPP: Yes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sectoral-innovation-councils-on-intellectual-property-rights-2013-rti-requests-dipp-responses

Eight Challenges Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome

subha — 2016-06-18T17:09:38Z

Even after a decade of existence, Indian language Wikipedias are not yet known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia, the largest available encyclopedia made in the human history, is what it is today because of the hundreds and thousands of volunteer editors.

The article was published in Global Voices on April 27, 2016. A version of this post was previously published on The Wire.

But while native-language Wikipedias are becoming game-changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed. Here, from my point of view, are some of the challenges that Indian-language Wikipedias are currently facing.

1. Language communities

The language communities of many of the Indian languages are such that many of them do not know how to search for information online, in language typed in their script. Some of these communities even believe that because Google’s home page does not display their script, their language does not exist on the Internet. Google, which starting with five Indian languages as options in its interface, now has has nine Indian languages. But this does not stop a Santali or Manipuri user from searching in Unicode Ol chiki (the script for Santali) or in Unicode Meithei (the script for Manipuri). Google, or any search engine, for that matter, will display anything available in any script on the Internet. But the perceived lack of this very function is keeping many people from connecting to the Internet, and to Wikipedia in particular.

2. Wikipedia’s editor community

Wikipedia is written by people like you and me. And everything, from writing to editing, is done by volunteers. And anybody can correct the mistakes and inaccuracies that exist in many Wikipedia articles. While several Indian languages are spoken by millions of people, the Wikipedia editor communities for these languages are very small, with only a handful editors contributing to editing those language versions of Wikipedia. In January this year, Hindi Wikipedia, for instance, had only 89 editors, while the total number of Hindi speakers is over 550 million.

3. Language input on computers

A vast majority of people in India do not know how to type in their own language. There is also little documentation instructing users about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing a proliferation in computer use and Internet access, native language input and other essential training of basic computing are not widely taught in schools in all states. This is unfortunate, as there is a wide variety of free software for native-language input, and the challenges of typing in Indian languages that existed a few years back are now almost non-existent.

4. Language input on mobile devices

With over 1 billion mobile phone users, India's 15% internet penetration rate will soon start growing at a faster pace. This in turn—along with the tough competition that will compel TSPs to lower data charges—will help many Indians get access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input they will be victims of the English-centric Internet and fail to enjoy the virtues of the former. Many Indians who have smartphones need full Indian language support, and especially built-in input methods, to be able to contribute to Wikipedia in their own languages.

5. Scarcity of Indian-language content on the Internet

The relative lack of native language content on the Internet is another major factor in the low adoption of Indian language Wikpedias. According to an Internet and Mobile Association of India survey conducted in 2012, over 6% of the population is left behind with regard to joining the online sphere simply because of a scarcity of content in their languages. Take my home state of Odisha, for instance: while the Kerala state government’s official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, at the time of writing the Odisha government’s tourism portal had no information in Odia. It is unfortunate that our languages are neglected largely within our own states.

6. Incompatibility between new and traditional media standards

Instead of adopting the Unicode standard, many traditional media outlets continue to use non-standard variants of the ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems Unicode, a global standard, has been available for Indian languages for almost 25 years now, but most of India's vernacular print media has failed to adopt it. As a result, many popular Indian-language newspapers are unavailable in Unicode on the open Internet.

7. Lack of Open Access

The majority of the information published on the Internet, and by the Indian government, in particular, is copyrighted. This paywalled garden of copyright restrictions restricts access of this information and prevents people from sharing and learning more. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is distributed under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license that allows anyone to make use of the content, and even distribute it commercially. Opening up information for the masses under free license regime could make it easily accessible to millions of people.

8. Failure to cater for people with disabilities

Many people in India cannot read, speak or write, and the country has over 60 million people with some form of hearing impairment. There is a desperate need for a high-quality text-to-speech and speech-to-text engines for people with physical disabilities. These products also be freely available so that those who cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS can contribute to Wikipedia in their languages. Many of the text-to-speech engines available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is difficult for the average speaker to use them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-voices-april-27-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-eight-challenges-indian-language-wikipedias-need-to-overcome

Tulu Wiki may go live soon as writers work day and night

praskrishna — 2016-05-03T02:17:10Z

An article about Tulu Wikipedia progress was published in the Times of India, Mangaluru edition on April 30, 2016.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/tulu-wiki-may-go-live-soon-as-writers-work-day-and-night

CCI allowed to probe Ericsson: FAQs on Ericsson’s disputes with Micromax and Intex

nehaa — 2016-05-01T13:46:52Z

The blog post is an analysis of the recent decision of the Delhi High Court, clarifying that the Competition Commission of India could investigate Ericsson for a violation of competition law. A shorter version of this blog post was published in the Quint on April 30, 2016.

Read the original article published by Quint on April 30 here.

The mobile phone is the sole access point to the internet for about half of India’s population. It has an important role to play in India’s development story, one that is amplified given the central government’s focus on leveraging the internet for better governance. The government has recognized this importance, evidenced through electronics manufacturing incentives and, a stated commitment to ensure ‘universal access to mobile connectivity’. Homegrown brands, including Micromax and Intex, with their affordable, low-cost mobile phones, play an important role in this development story.

In March, 2013, the Swedish multinational, Ericsson, sued Micromax for patent infringement, setting in motion a series of events, with the potential to disturb India’s mobile phone dream. Then, last month, the Delhi High Court (the Court) recognized the authority of the market regulator - the Competition Commission of India (CCI) - to probe Ericsson for its allegedly anticompetitive conduct.

Why did Ericsson sue Micromax?

Ericsson claims that Micromax’s mobile phones infringe its standard essential patents (SEPs) on mobile phone technologies, including 3G and EDGE.

How are some patents identified as SEPs?

International Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs) – such as ETSI or IEEE - recognize international standards. 3G and Wi-Fi are examples of such internationally recognized standards.

According to the SSOs, the determination of standards depends on consensus, driven by their members. After a standard is determined, SEP owners (including Ericsson) voluntarily disclose which of their patents are essential to the determined standard, and, undertake to license these on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, to any willing licensee.

Does this give rise to legal issues?

This process results in a variety of (well-documented) legal questions, many of which have been raised in India’s SEP litigation, and have been alluded to by the Court in the present judgment. The Court has recognized the potential for SEPs to create dominant positions for their owners, noting that “any technology accepted as a standard would have to be mandatorily followed [emphasis, mine] by all enterprises in the particular industry.”

Some other legal issues around SEPs include the enforceability of FRAND commitments; determining what would constitute ‘fair’, ‘reasonable’ and, ‘non-discriminatory’; the possibility of non/incomplete disclosure by patent owners; and, a refusal by licensees to negotiate FRAND terms in good faith. A related issue that has received comparatively less attention is the essentiality of peripheral or, non standard but essential patents, where there is no obligation to license on FRAND terms.

Have there been other SEP infringement suits filed in India?

Yes. Besides Micromax, Ericsson has also sued other low-cost mobile phone sellers/manufacturers, homegrown and otherwise, for patent infringement. These include Intex, Lava, Gionee, Xia and iBall. In addition, Vringo has also sued ZTE and Asus, separately. [In this article, we will limit ourselves to a discussion on Ericsson’s suits against Micromax and Intex.]

What did Micromax and Intex do after being sued by Ericsson?

Ericsson’s suits were followed by deliberations between the parties (Ericsson and Micromax, and, Ericsson and Intex, independently) and some interim orders by the Court. This litigation is ongoing, and final orders are awaited.

Meanwhile, both Micromax and Intex have pursued a series of other remedies. Intex has filed applications for the revocation of Ericsson’s patents. In addition, Micromax and Intex have each filed separate complaints under India’s Competition Act, 2002 before the CCI, alleging that Ericsson had abused its dominant position. This is a punishable offence under Indian competition law.

Micromax and Intex have both claimed that Ericsson’s royalty rates were excessive. In addition, Micromax has objected to Ericsson’s use of the threat of injunctions and custom seizures, and, has also claimed that Ericsson’s conduct results in a denial of market access for Indian handset manufacturers. Intex has alleged, inter alia, that it was forced into signing an onerous non disclosure agreement by Ericsson; and, that it was forced to negotiate licences without a complete disclosure of its patents by Ericsson.

The CCI, finding there to be a prima facie case in each of the above complaints, ordered the Director General to undertake an investigation into the allegations made by both – Micromax and Intex. These orders were challenged by Ericsson in the Court.

On what grounds did Ericsson challenge the CCI’s orders?

Briefly, Ericsson argued-

(a) that the issue was one of patent law, which barred the applicability of competition law;

(b) that it was not an ‘enterprise’ under the Competition Act, 2002, and, that the CCI was empowered to check anticompetitive conduct only of ‘enterprises’;

(d) that since the disputes between the parties were already being heard in other proceedings before the Court, the CCI could not adjudicate them; and,

(e) that Intex and Micromax were barred from making such allegations. Ericsson opined that since they had challenged its ownership of the SEPs, through revocation of petition applications (filed by Intex), and a denial of infringement claims (by Micromax), they could not now present a complaint premised on it being the owner of those same SEPs.

What did the Court hold?

Rejecting Ericsson’s arguments, the Court held that the CCI did [emphasis, mine] have the jurisdiction to examine if Ericsson’s conduct was anticompetitive, finding it to be an ‘enterprise’ under the Competition Act, 2002. However, the Court was clear that the CCI’s actions could be subject to judicial review by the High Court. It also found that the mere applicability of the Patents Act, 1970, did not bar the applicability of competition law, since the legislations covered distinct fields and served different purposes. Further, it opined that Micromax and Intex were free to explore alternative remedies; neither this pursuit, nor, the pendency of disputes on similar issues before the Court, was a bar to the CCI’s jurisdiction.

Interestingly, while not adjudicating the issue of Ericsson’s abuse of dominance in this particular case, Justice Bakhru, citing its conduct as presented by the other parties said that in some cases, “such conduct, if it is found, was directed in pressuring an implementer to accept non-FRAND terms, would amount to an abuse of dominance.”

What does the judgment mean for India’s homegrown brands?

The judgment is a boost for India’s home grown manufacturers in their battle against global patent holders. However, while it certainly validates the role and powers of India’s young market regulator, it will no doubt be appealed. One also expects multiple appeals over the CCI’s findings in the present and, future similar cases.

It is impossible to predict the outcome of legal proceedings in SEP litigation. Accordingly, Micromax, Intex (and others) would do well to augment their own patent portfolios (either by filing their own patents, or, by acquiring those of other companies). This may create a more level playing field, opening up alternate channels of negotiation, including, cross-licensing. They may also seek access to Ericsson’s SEPs under the compulsory licensing mechanism in India’s patent law.

What does the government have to say?

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has recently released a discussion paper on these issues, inviting comments from stakeholders. It would be unsurprising if the government intends to regulate this space, given the strong implications for not just its flagship Make in India and Digital India programs, but also its foreign policy narrative on protecting IPRs and fostering innovation. Immediate welcome steps from the government would be a final word on the National IPR Policy, and, the adoption of the National Competition Policy, awaited since 2014 and 2011, respectively.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-quint-nehaa-chaudhari-april-30-2016-cci-allowed-to-probe-ericsson

Exercise to Correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins

praskrishna — 2016-05-01T10:37:12Z

It will go on till Saturday at the Ramakrishna pre-university college.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/exercise-to-correct-articles-in-tulu-wikipedia-begins

MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Tezpur University

Karan Tripathi — 2016-04-26T16:27:55Z

This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in Tezpur University. The author has analysed all the data received under various heads such as income, grants from MHRD, planned and non planned expenditure, nature and frequency of programmes organised and the allocation of funds for the same.

Throughout the course of observation and presentation of the analysed data, the author seeks to trace the presence of unjustified underutilisation of funds by the aforementioned university as provided by the MHRD during the period 2013-2014.

To collect the information for the given study, an RTI application was filed to the Tezpur University on 16/01/2015 by the Centre for Internet and Society. The reply to RTI application was received on 05/02/2015. These are the documents received by CIS from Tezpur University:

For RTI Response click here (Tezpur Receipt of RTI). Also see Tezpur Forwarded Response
For complete supporting documents see (Tezpur- Annual Report, Financial Statement, Report on IPR Cell)

Hereinafter, in order to receive any information about Tezpur University’s RTI reply, kindly refer to the above mentioned links. Following are the queries mentioned in the RTI application along with their replies.

1. Reports on the implementation of the IPERPO scheme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the implementation of the MHRD IPR Chair funded under the scheme at Tezpur University from 2003-2014

Reply: Tezpur University has submitted detailed documents for the period 2013-2014 in order to highlight various activities undertaken by the University to implement the IPERPO scheme. This information is sent to CIS through summary documents, notices and newsletters.

2. Documents detailing the release of grants to the MHRD IPR Chairs under the IPERPO Scheme

Reply: The University received a grant of Rs.25,00,000 from MHRD under the IPERPO scheme for the period 2013-2014.

3. Documents relating to receipts of utilisation certificates and audited expenditure statements and matters related to all financial sanctions with regard to funds granted to the MHRD IPR Chair established under the IPERPO scheme at Tezpur University

Reply: The University has submitted the utilisation certificate for the period 2013-2014 along with the expenditure statement.

4. Documents regarding all matters pertaining to finance and budget related the MHRD IPR Chair under the IPERPOs scheme established at Tezpur University

Reply: As per the documents submitted to CIS, the proposed budget for the period 2013-2014 is not submitted by the University. However, the budget for the period 2014-2015 is submitted and the sum of Rs. 49,79,231 is proposed by the University.

2.0 Comparative Analysis between University Response and the guidelines of MHRD Scheme Document

The Scheme Document of MHRD (http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/scheme.pdf) is a comprehensive document which consists of guidelines regarding Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach. It talks about a list of objectives, purposes, conditions and eligibility criteria for a University to ensure in order to implement IPERPO in a truest sense. This document provides the procedural as well as qualifying conditions for an Institute to ensure or fulfil before applying for the MHRD grant. Some of these conditions include maintenance of utilization certificates, audit reports, expenditure statements and event information which would be open to access on demand by MDHR or Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

Objectives

In order to fulfil the objectives mentioned in the scheme document, Tezpur University undertook following activities:

Conducted courses in the mainstream undergraduate, post graduate and PhD programmes
Facilitated assessment and IPR filings of university innovations
Field work on Geographical Indication: Muga Silk of Assam
Training of IPR Officers
Outreach programmes at Dilbrugarh University and Silchar
Colloquium on Contemporary Physics and the Role of IPR
Training programmes on traditional knowledge and communication with stakeholders

Eligibility

Tezpur University is recognized by the University Grants Commission. Therefore, it fulfils the eligibility criteria mentioned in the scheme document.

3.0 Financial Analysis

Tezpur University received grants in two instalments for the same financial year (2013-2014). The first instalment was sanctioned on 19^th August 2013 and the second instalment was sanctioned on 26^th March 2014.

Financial Year 2013-2014

In this financial year a total grant of Rs. 33,00,000 was sanctioned to the University in two instalments of Rs. 25,00,000 and Rs. 8,00,000. Out of this, a total sum of Rs. 35,24,446 was utilised by the University.

It is clear from the above drawn chart that the maximum amount of money was spent on the salaries of Chair Professor and his staff.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mhrd-ipr-chair-series-information-received-from-tezpur-university

Summary of CIS Comments to DIPP’s Discussion Paper on SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms

sinha — 2016-04-26T12:07:30Z

This blog post summarises CIS’ responses to DIPP’s Discussion Paper on SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms. The response made specific recommendations regarding adequacy of Indian law to determine SEP litigation, remedies for FRAND assured SEPs, FRAND royalty rates, SSO’s policies, parties’ non-disclosure agreements and transparency, and essentiality of SEPs and their declassification.

On April 22nd, 2016, CIS filed a comment with the Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), regarding Standard Essential Patents(SEPs) in India and their availability on FRAND terms. A TL;DR version of the comment follows.

Whether IPR and antitrust legislations should be amended

CIS submitted that no amendments to either the Patents Act, 1970 or the Competition Act, 2005 may be preferred. The changes that need to be brought forth are the adoption of a balanced National IPR Policy, and a National Competition Policy - both of which have been in the works for a while. Further, we urge the government to not enter into FTAs like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

IPR Policies of SSOs, and prescribing Guidelines for their functioning

CIS recommended that, first, Indian SSOs adopt an IPR Policy factoring in “India specific requirements”; second, on TSDSI’s IPR Policy (and DOSTI, GIFSI), certain changes be made to the policy to a) require the members to refrain from seeking injunctive relief b) delete the condition where FRAND negotiations may be subject to a condition of reciprocity; (c) to identify in detail the procedure to be followed in case of patent ‘holdups’ and patent ‘holdouts’; (d) to identify in detail the procedure to be followed in case of refusal to license by TSDSI members, and, nonmembers, both; and, (e) to include a detailed process on the declassification of a standard or technical specification. Further, SSOs may consider recommending the use of royalty-free licenses, in tune with the W3C and Open Mobile Alliance.

The government should prescribe Model Guidelines that may be adopted by Indian SSOs (incorporating the suggestions above), in view of increasing complexity of SEP litigation, and potential abuse of FRAND process. The Model Guidelines may additionally cover (a) the composition of the SSO; (b) the process of admitting members; (c) the process of the determination of a standard or technical specification; (d) the process of declassification of a standard or technical specification; (e) the IPR Policy; (f) resolution of disputes; (g) applicable law.

Royalty Rates

The government should also intervene in the setting of royalties and FRAND terms, in light of severe inadequacies in the SSOs’ IPR policies. CIS suggested that the government should initiate the formation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies and apply a compulsory license with a five per cent royalty. Also, payment of royalties on SEPs should be capped by fixing a limit by the DIPP.

Further, royalty rates for SEPs should be based on the smallest saleable patent practising component.

Non-Disclosure Agreements and Transparency

On the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements in SEP/FRAND litigation, CIS submitted that . pending a final determination by the CCI (and subsequent appeals) it would be premature to make an absolute claim on whether the use of NDAs results in an abuse of dominant position in all instances.

On making the practices of cross-licensing and patent pooling transparent, CIS strongly urged the DIPP to strictly enforce the compliance of Form 27s by patentees. Availability of Form 27s will critically enable willing licensees to access patent working information in a timely manner. The Form 27 template may be modified to include more details, including patent pool licenses, with an explicit declaration of the names of the licensees and not just the number.

Further, guidelines may be drawn up on whether it was discriminatory to charge no royalties (whether on the SSPPU or on the whole device) for a patent holder in a cross licensing arrangement with another, when it charges royalty on the selling price of the device from a non cross-licensor.

Remedies for FRAND- assured SEPs

CIS recommended that courts adopt a more cautious stance towards granting injunctions in the field of SEP litigation, because a) injunctions may deter willing licensees from agreeing to the FRAND commitment, and also harm them b) accurately proving irreparable damage is difficult to establish in the Indian context for smartphone manufacturers c) there exists ambiguity in Indian jurisprudence to determine the conduct of an unwilling licensee, inter alia.

In CIS’ opinion, there is no need for an independent expert body to determine FRAND terms for SEPs and devising the methodology for such a purpose. The existing legal and regulatory framework is reasonably equipped to determine FRAND terms. Analytical frameworks may be studied in American jurisprudence to determine reasonable royalty rates, and patent damages.

Essentiality of SEPs and their declassification

To determine whether a patent declared as SEP is actually an Essential Patent, CIS submits that various methodologies have been used by studies to analyse the same. Goodman and Myers led a study on the subject in 2005; and additionally, laboratory tests and expert opinions can be taken into account to determine the essentiality.

Lastly, CIS suggested that Indian SSOs maintain a publicly accessible database of SEPs found to be invalid or non-essential in India. Such a record will assist the process of declassifying SEPs timely.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/summary-of-cis-comments-to-dipp2019s-discussion-paper-on-seps-and-their-availability-on-frand-terms

First Round-table on Innovation, IP and Competition

praskrishna — 2016-04-25T07:42:45Z

The First Annual Roundtable on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition was organized by the recently established Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property & Competition (CIIPC) at the National Law University, Delhi. Dr. Arul George Scaria and Prof. Yogesh Pai are the co-directors of this Centre. The event was held on April 1 and 2, 2016 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

The round-table offered a unique forum for academia, policy makers, industry stakeholders and academically-minded practitioners on emerging issues at the interface of innovation, intellectual property & competition law and policy. The attempt is to create a balanced and open discussion on some of the intensely debated issues across the world, while taking particular note of recent developments in India.

The full day round-table on April 2 deliberated on the following sub-themes in four different sessions:

Innovation Economics: What can it Teach IP Policy-making in India?
Assessing the Role of Patents and Competition Policy in Technology Markets: Perspectives from Business and Regulation
Intellectual Property and Competition Law in India: Issues of Jurisdiction & Role of Courts
DIPP Discussion Paper on SEPs: FRAND in India from a Comparative Perspective

Download the Programme Schedule

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/first-round-table-on-innovation-ip-and-competition

Typography Day 2016

praskrishna — 2016-04-24T15:16:04Z

Typography Day was organized for the 9th time at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore in collaboration with the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) with support from India Design Association (InDeAs) and Aksharaya.

Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker at the event. He along with Pooja Saxena made a presentation on Bringing Ol Chiki to the Digital World.

Typoday 2016: Presentation by Pooja Saxena and Subhashish Panigrahi from Subhashish Panigrahi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/typography-day-2016