Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual Property is the Possession of a Curious Mind – Celebrating the World Intellectual Property Day 2024 at IIT Kharagpur

On the occasion of the World Intellectual Property Day, the Intellectual Property (IP) Cell of the Office of Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy (SRIC), IIT Kharagpur organized a programme on Intellectual Property in Ben Gupta Auditorium of the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSOIPL) on 26^th April, 2024. The programme accentuates the importance of IP in modern science and transformational technological pursuits and was inaugurated by Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, in attendance by a large number of students, research scholars faculty and staff members.

The theme of The World IP Day 2024 was to align the inventions towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). IIT Kharagpur has already taken a leap towards aligning with SDGs and has published the Sustainability Policy of the Institute in the Website. The Institute has also taken initiatives towards directing the innovations towards attainment of the SDGs for shaping our future together with the Intellectual Property.

In the opening address, Prof. Santanu Dhara, Associate Dean R&D and Professor In-Charge of Intellectual Property Rights (PIC-IPR), talked about the genesis and history of the IPR and introduced its basic aspects. He also touched upon the various IPR and patent filing activities of IIT Kharagpur and urged the faculty, students and scholars to secure their IPR by filing patents.

Prof. Rintu Banerjee, Dean R&D, IIT Kharagpur

Prof. Rintu Banerjee, Dean R&D, presented the record of annual patent filing at IIT Kharagpur which showed a positive trend over the last few years. Prof. Banerjee also compared the details of patents filed and granted from IIT Kharagpur with those from the other top academic institutions in India and the world. Overall, Prof. Banerjee emphasized on the importance of filing patents for institutional and national development and called the IIT Kharagpur community to come forward and make the endeavour of ‘100 patents in 100 hours’ successful. Prof. Banerjee also shared some of the administrative and academic measures the institute is going to implement for promoting the IP drive.

Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur

In the Chairman’s speech, Prof. V K Tewari delivered a fascinating and encouraging lecture covering the journey of patent filing at IIT Kharagpur. It is wonderful to hear that back in 1982 Prof. Tewari visited the patent office in Kolkata every day for around two weeks to learn the rules and regulations of patent filing following the advice of his M.Tech supervisor, which resulted in the filing of the first patent from this institute. Prof. Tewari continued his drive and owned as many as twenty patents throughout his academic journey. Prof. Tewari particularly focused on the importance of securing IP and translating that to successful start-ups to foster the country’s economy and generate employment.

There were two successive lectures first by Prof. Padmavati Machikanti from RGSOIPL on the overview of different forms of IP and subsequently by Prof. Tapas Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Professor of the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, on the patenting aspects in Indian context. Prof. Banerjee also touched upon how technological research can benefit the rural economy through IPR.

Mr. Sumit Chatterjee, Legal Associate, SRIC, briefly mentioned the IP-related activities of SRIC

In the end, Prof. Banerjee and Prof. Dhara thanked the tremendous support extended by the IIT Kharagpur faculty members in performing a timely review of the proposals submitted for patent filing. The programme ended with a long Q&A session where Prof. Goutam Saha, former PIC of IPR, and Prof. Soumitra Paul, Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, shared some of their opinion and suggestions to make the patent drive at IIT Kharagpur a more effective one. [Read : IIT Kharagpur calls for 100 Patents in 100 days]

Finally, in the vote of thanks Prof. Niharika Sahoo Bhattacharya acknowledged the Director, Dean R&D, Associate Dean R&D, the speakers and attendees for making the event successful. Special thanks was imparted to the Deans and all the faculty and staff members of the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law for extending all support in organizing the event at their venue.

About WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to promote and protect Intellectual Property (IP) across the world by cooperating with countries as well as international organizations. It began operations on 26 April 1970 when the convention entered into force. The current Director General is Singaporean Daren Tang, former head of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, who began his term on 1st October 2020.

WIPO’s activities include hosting forums to discuss and shape international IP rules and policies, providing global services that register and protect IP in different countries, resolving transboundary IP disputes, helping connect IP systems through uniform standards and infrastructure, and serving as a general reference database on all IP matters; this includes providing reports and statistics on the state of IP protection or innovation both globally and in specific countries. WIPO also works with governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals to utilize IP for socio-economic development.

WIPO administers 26 international treaties that concern a wide variety of intellectual property issues, ranging from the protection of audiovisual works to establishing international patent classification. It is governed by the General Assembly and the Coordination Committee, which together set policy and serve as the main decision making bodies. The General Assembly also elects WIPO’s chief administrator, the Director General, currently Daren Tang of Singapore, who took office on 1st October 2020. WIPO is administered by a Secretariat that helps carry out its day-to-day activities.

Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, WIPO has external offices around the world, including in Algiers (Algeria); Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Beijing (China), Tokyo (Japan); Abuja (Nigeria); Moscow (Russia); and Singapore (Singapore). Unlike most UN organizations, WIPO does not rely heavily on assessed or voluntary contributions from member states; 95 percent of its budget comes from fees related to its global services.

WIPO currently has 193 member states, including 190 UN member states and the Cook Islands, Holy See and Niue; Palestine has permanent observer status. The only non-members, among the countries recognized by the UN are the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and South Sudan.

WIPO was formally created by the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, which entered into force on 26 April 1970. That date is commemorated annually as World Intellectual Property Day, which raises awareness of the importance of IP. Under Article 3 of this convention, WIPO seeks to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world. WIPO became a specialized agency of the UN in 1974. The Agreement between the United Nations and the World Intellectual Property Organization notes in Article 1 that WIPO is responsible:

“For promoting creative intellectual activity and for facilitating the transfer of technology related to industrial property to the developing countries in order to accelerate economic, social and cultural development, subject to the competence and responsibilities of the United Nations and its organs, particularly the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, as well as of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and of other agencies within the United Nations system.”

WIPO Development Agenda

In October 2004, WIPO agreed to adopt a proposal offered by Argentina and Brazil, the Proposal for the Establishment of a Development Agenda for WIPO —from the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization. This proposal was well supported by developing countries. The agreed “WIPO Development Agenda” was the culmination of a long process of transformation for the organization from one that had historically been primarily aimed at protecting the interests of rightholders, to one that has increasingly incorporated the interests of other stakeholders in the international intellectual property system as well as integrating into the broader corpus of international law on human rights, environment and economic cooperation. In 2009, WIPO started drafting future treaties on intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore in relation with indigenous peoples and local communities.

In December 2011, WIPO published its first World Intellectual Property Report on the Changing Face of Innovation, the first such report of the new Office of the Chief Economist. WIPO is also a co-publisher of the Global Innovation Index.

Recent Events

WIPO, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WTO launched on 11 April 2022 their new Trilateral COVID-19 Technical Assistance Platform. This new tool aims to help members and WTO accession candidates address their capacity building needs to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Platform provides members and accession candidates with a single contact form which they can use to reach out to the trilateral organizations.

World Intellectual Property Day

World Intellectual Property Day is observed annually on 26 April. The event was established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2000 to raise awareness of how patents, copyright, trademarks and designs impact on daily life and to celebrate creativity, and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of economies and societies across the globe.World Intellectual Property Day is WIPO’s largest Intellectual Property (IP) public outreach campaign, instituted with the aim of establishing a set up framework for broader mobilization and awareness, to open up access to the promotional aspect of innovation and to recognize the achievements of promoters of intellectual property throughout the world.

Inputs by:Prof. Debalay Chakrabarti, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Kharagpur
Email: debalay@metal.iitkgp.ac.in

Edited By: Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

Follow us: Facebook – IIT Kharagpur; Twitter – @IITKgp; Instagram – @iit.kgp; LinkedIn – Indian Institute of Technology
For news visit: https://kgpchronicle.iitkgp.ac.in/

Order Order!! The 5th National Moot Court Competition was a star-struck affair at IIT Kharagpur

Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSoPIL) of IIT Kharagpur conducted the 5th National Moot Court Competition from 29th to 31st March, 2024. The inaugural ceremony witnessed the presence of eminent law practitioners including Hon’ble Justice Mr. I P Mukherjee, Judge, Calcutta High Court who was the Chief Guest of the programme along with Prof. (Dr.) Dilip Ukey, VC, MNLU, Mumbai, the Guest of Honour. Prof. Dipa Dube and Dr. Shreya Matilal RGSoPIL were the convenors of the programme.

IIT Kharagpur has been organizing the National Moot Court Competition (NMCC) with great enthusiasm. Through its rigorous and engaging format, NMCC continues to serve as a beacon of legal excellence, fostering the growth of future legal professionals in India. NMCC is an event that focuses on numerous areas of law. This brings for law students an excellent opportunity to hone their advocacy skills, test their knowledge of law, and engage in constructive legal interaction and discourse. NMCC follows a format typical of moot court competitions, where participants are required to prepare written memorials and present oral arguments. The competition includes various rounds, including preliminary rounds, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final. A distinguished panel of judges, comprising legal experts and practitioners evaluates the performance of the participating teams.

The valedictory session of the Moot Court saw a footfall of Hon’ble Justice Sanjay Karol, Judge, Supreme Court of India who was the Chief Guest of the program and Guests of Honour Justice Sampa Sarkar, Judge, High Court at Calcutta; Justice Tirthankar Ghosh, Judge, High Court, Calcutta and Justice Mriganga Shekhar Sahu, Judge, High Court at Orissa in the presence of Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur. The dignitaries lit up the lamp to celebrate the indomitable spirit of legal scholarship and advocacy that has been on display throughout its duration that is echoing the halls of the school after over half a decade. Over the past two decades, the institute has witnessed the extraordinary talent, dedication and passion of the participants as they grapple with complex legal issues, presented complex legal arguments and are engaged in spirited debates.

“Today marks the culmination of the days filled with intense competitions, spirited debates and invaluable learning experiences throughout the last two days. We have witnessed the remarkable talents, dedication and passion exhibited by the participating teams from various corners of the country. Your commitment to the excellence and pursuit of legal knowledge have truly being commendable and it is a testament to your unwavering determination and hardwork. Once again I extend my warmest welcome to each and every one of you to this valedictory session, may it be a memorable and inspiring conclusion to what has been a truly remarkable journey of learning, growth and camaraderie,” said Prof. Dipa Dube, Dean, Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSoIPL).

While welcoming the Chief Guest and Guests of Honour, Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, remarked, “I am delighted to be here in the presence of the members of the highest justice imparting bodies of this nation especially Supreme Court Judge, Hon’ble Sanjay Karol ji. We are humbled that he accepted our invitation. Today IITians are every where around the world and we would like the participating judges to give lectures in their domain area of expertise. Even the case studies which you will discuss will be very good for our students and faculty members because that is an invariable experience you have while judging the cases of different types and I think the amount of psychology and human face that you keep in taking those decisions is marvelous. We need such personalities like you to come and encourage the students and the faculties at IIT Kharagpur. Lectures from these stalwarts will be an asset to the students that will impart professional insights which the students won’t get from just the books. After meeting some of the advocates, I can tell you students, that they actually read large number of books, more than we can imagine. As far as IIT Kharagpur is concerned, we are the first IIT of the world, started at 1951. It has the maximum number of departments, schools and centres as an higher education institution with Department of Agriculture, Mining, Architecture etc. Vinod Gupta School of Management was the first school in the which has the name upon an Alumni Donar of an institute. We also have a holistic approach to study curriculum with Academy of Classical and Folk Arts, School of Happiness, School for Leadership etc. All the works that IIT Kharagpur has done till now are in lines with the G-20 declaration. Whether you talk about disaster management, rare earth metals, innovation, AI, technology management etc., we have these kind of expertise here at IIT Kharagpur which we are proud of. MOOT Court is a great opportunity for the students to express their point of view in an open platform infront of others and should be indulged more often in terms of growing and networking among the teams that participated. We would definitely want our Alumni to be the judges of the Supreme Court in the near future. The spirit of participation should always be encouraged in these competition.”

While addressing the Moot Court Competition, Hon’ble Judge Sampa Sarkar, High Court at Calcutta, said “Thank you for this honour, because I knew that I would never clear IIT JEE entrance exam to set my foot here at IIT. Atleast you have made an opportunity for me to come here, which is a great privilege. I would like to ask Sir that do we have to pass the JEE exam to get into the faculty of school of happiness because learning how to be happy is a crucial question. Often we try to introspect that and try to develop it within ourselves to a point where we can learn to be happy. But if you are taught to be happy, it gets easier. Coming back to the Moot Court, it was one of the toughest MOOT proposition I have ever came across. I would like to congratulate all the students who could comprehend to start a research on this MOOT topic. It was a great effort, great MOOTING, interjections are only their to make you more ready and help you to think on your legs which we are at times supposed to do. Mooting is like making a product rightable. Its an idea, an expression, your skill that you develop and place as the finished product. It is the same way a lawyer places a case, its labour, skill, expression and delivering. Mooting has its own advantages, it helps you to express yourself better and helps you to research better on legal topics because you have to as a lawyer research and you have to be ready with what kind of questions the bench proposes which you will have to answer at that stage. You cannot fumble, you cannot avoid the question because that can go against you. First and most importantly it helps the spirit of team building. Every profession as a lawyer or even judges, team building and team spirit is very important because that it how you improve and learn and you can be a better version of yourself when you learn from others. We have been to very basic institutions but you have been very lucky to have this opportunity to come to an institution which has great infrastructure, use of AI, all these things are really a progress.”

On the same lines Justice Tirthankar Ghosh, High Court Judge of Calcutta remarked, “Things have changed so far as the curriculum of law is concerned. Of late, this Moot court mediation, arbitration going on in the law schools were never there when we were in college. In our days Moot court was something, where you were given a particular case law which you have to mug up and the best you could produce in front of the professor was how you were given a number. This competition and fighting or debating amongst two teams or two individuals were never there with our curriculum. It was just a basic way of introducing how you can open your mouth before a set of people. This total concept has changed now. Visiting institutes I find now, the biggest challenge is that how many of these students passing out will come to the litigating sector, this is also a challenge. Persons passing out of these institutions mostly joins the multinationals, so dearth in the BAR Council continues. The topic was definitely good today, it was a challenging topic, may not be a subject that we as professionals are associated with, but the question is the subject which India as a whole honours. Those who have presented, have presented to the best of their abilities. Don’t be hurt with whatever the outcome is, this is the starting of a life. All of you have long way to go. These topics are for the multi-nationals, come to the basic topics of life. You should also have topics where you all must argue on all the subjects, the easy maintenance cases which you start with. If you start a professional career, you will find a destitute lady coming to you with a brief who has been deserted by her husband and often don’t get assistance from the legal aid. Legal aid is again a sector where we invite the newcomers to join and start because litigation is a sector which you will continue to be in these kind of ligitaions through out your career but those would give you exposure in only the litigation sectors. All subjects are taught in here but as it has been said the curriculum includes something where you have an expressed intensity of these IPR laws which are over here. These are laws of the multinationals but you should also think on topics which the commoners have and touch the grassroot level of this country. One day when you are successful, you have got to think about the commoners, the citizens of this country. I wish all of you a bright career and better life ahead.”

Guest of Honour Justice Mruganka Sekhar Sahoo, Judge High Court of Orissa,commented, “My learning from this MOOT court is that no one is a loser. It is indeed a privilege to enter into the hallowed pristine of this august institution. Though I have not cleared JEE but I came here for the first time in 1999 when my younger brother got through JEE. I would like to state what my other seniors have stated that this is the height of multi-tasking. While arguing, you have to hear the other side, you have to hear the judge and be on your legs. You have to develop a point, that is a charm of being a student of law. I still have my notes from the teaching of my professors even after 25 years of career span and being a Judge. It is a process, it can be a thousand steps, a ten thousand steps as the Director said. I wish all the best to all the students and congratulate the entire team for the warm hospitality and the students for the interesting MOOT court problem and as suggested by my earlier speaker that never forget about the problem faced by a common man as the people look up to the courts to give solutions to all their problems. Problems like divorces which might not have a strict legal solution but still people have a hope, hope to get justice so I once again thank you all for this privilege.”

Chief Guest Supreme Court Judge Sanjay Karol gave his valedictory address and said, “I must pay homage to martyrs and the freedom fighters who were imprisoned here in this hijli prison. A visit to this place only reminded me of my childhood days in Shimla. I must also thank you to be a part of the process of great learning because education is something that is continuous till the last breathe. Coming here, I learnt that this great institution is not only of National Importance but also of Eminence. I am sure that the students who pass out of this institution or get exposed to this institution would excel in their lives in every aspect of the matter. At the outset, I thank this great institution for inviting me for the 5th year of this Moot Court. This is a testament as to how law has acquiesced as an exponential growth in India. Today, you are very fortunate through the process of these Moot court competition, you learn at least one thing that life is not only about talking, thinking and speaking on your legs, it is also understanding when not to speak. Life is also about making out a difference between respect for law and fear of law. I would like to highlight the interplay between the rule of law, the economic development and the role of the judiciary especially the judges and the lawyers. Some of you inspired with the experiences as the part of this MOOT may seek out careers in and around many intersections of intellectual property laws. The opportunities are many fold right from in-house council in these multinational conglomerates, government agencies, independent council and private institutions including teaching. Intellectual property rights and IPR as we commonly say serve as a common stone, creativity and economic growth in this 21st century. From patents to copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets, IPR encompasses a diverse way of legal mechanism designed to protect intangible assets and foster conducive environment for innovation and creativity. Strong intellectual property rights, laws served as a catalyst for economic growth by incentivising innovation fostering creativity and promoting investment in research and development. When individuals and businessmen have confidence that their intellectual property will be protected and rewarded, they are more likely to invest time, resources and expertise in developing new technology product and service. By encouraging a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship strong IPR laws stimulate competitive drive productivity gains and fuel economic growth in both develop and developing machines and economies, moreover effective enforcement of IPR laws ensures level playing field for businesses, prevents unfair competition and enhances consumer confidence in the market place.

“It is not imperative for me to delve into the statutory regime of the IPR laws in India and its dynamic nature also has the institutionalized international regime, as we know what WTO trips and that is the change in the economic and world scenario shifting liberalization in India and opening up a world economy. We saw we were rushed to protect and preserve what was our culture and heritage and ultimately we succeeded in protecting the trademark, the patents and the copyright be it a Basmati, Tulsi or Haldi among others. In the last three days you have delve into the intricacies of intellectual property law during this MOOT. The effective protection enforcement of these rights hinge upon a robust legal framework rooted in the principals of rule of law. It is something which is enshrined in the very core of our constitution, protection and promotion of core human rights and has been the focus of both the preamble Part III, Part IV, Part IV A of the constitution. Our constitutional forefathers have foreseen the role of judiciary in securing the rights of all kinds including the economic growth of the people of India. This has brought in the preamble of the constitution which says that the people of India having resolve to secure justice, social, economic and political for all its citizens. Judicial independence is of absolute importance. The 40 crore people in the country must have this confidence and resolve in their mind that they can come forward and seek justice which is not only a satisfaction but justice which is secured by the means of just, fair and proper. A robust and independent court with integrity is one of the reasons for it to be known as the third pillar of the Indian democracy. Every judge be it at whatever level and also every member of the BAR along with the law students have lot to contribute in this field and aspect of independence of judiciary. You cannot be a mute spectator, you have to voice your feelings, your thought and speech within the frame of Part III of the constitution. Rule of Law is intrinsically linked with economic development and in every thriving economy, the rule of law serves as a bedrock upon which all other structures are built. It ensures predictability, stability and fairness creating an environment conducive to economic growth and investment. Economic development which is directly correlated with the achievement of the principals initiated in the constitution, indicates not only the development of an individual, but development of a nation. Every 140 crore Indian must be benefited of this economic growth which is to happen in India,” he added.

Listen to the full speech by clicking the link below:

Ms. Konkona Banerjee from Amity University Kolkata has been adjudged as the Best Researcher of the 5th Moot Court Competition at IIT Kharagpur. The Best Memorial was adjudged to Ms. Muskan Verma, Ms. Raashi and Mr. Aditya from the University Institute of Legal Studies Punjab University Chandigarh and the Best Speaker Prelims was given Mr. Nikhil Kumar Mishra from Lyod Law College, Greater Noida for the preliminary rounds. For the Best Speaker Final, it was adjudged to Mr. K Swaminathan from School of Law, Shastri University. The runners up of the 5th Moot Court Competition at IIT Kharagpur was the University Institute of Legal Studies from Punjab University comprising of Ms. Muskan Verma, Ms. Raashi and Mr. Aditya. The winners trophy was awarded to the School of Law, Sastra University of Tamil Nadu comprising of Mr. Hariharan, Jerin Mathew and K. Swaminathan. The prize money have been sponsored by Agarwal Atol headed by our Alumnus Mr. Pranav Agarwal and Technology Council Foundation. Prof. Uday Shankar gave the the vote of thanks to conclude the programme.

Established in 2006, the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSOIPL) is unique within the IIT system for its focus on technology and law. It offers LL.B. program with an emphasis on Intellectual Property Law, and also LLM and PhD programs in Law. The faculty is multidisciplinary and engaged in various research projects, while the curriculum is global. Practical training is offered through workshops and clinical courses, and students have excelled in competitions and conferences. RGSOIPL alumni work in diverse sectors, from industry to academia.

https://www.livelaw.in/lawschool/moot-courts/rgsoipl-iit-kharagpur-moot-court-competition-251828

https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/nmcc-2024-brochure-2-526446.pdf

Edited By: Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

Follow us: Facebook – IIT Kharagpur; Twitter – @IITKgp; Instagram – @iit.kgp; LinkedIn – Indian Institute of Technology
For news visit: https://kgpchronicle.iitkgp.ac.in/

IIT Kharagpur Law Students to Draft Real-time Patents for Institute’s Innovations

In 2006 IIT Kharagpur had introduced a new academic discipline in the IIT system – Intellectual Property Law, seed-funded by distinguished alumnus Dr. Vinod Gupta. Over the years, Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, the law school at IIT Kharagpur has not only expanded its scope across all academic verticals of law education but has emerged as one of India’s top law schools. With Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) still as the key domain, the school has been instrumental in promoting IPR workshops for young innovators. A few years back a drive was undertaken at the School to promote Geographical Indication tag for traditional crafts across the country. In the Spring semester, the School conducted project-based learning by enabling the law students to draft patent documents of actual innovations made by the researchers at IIT Kharagpur.

“While we routinely conduct patent drafting exercises this is the first time we have adopted real-time patent applications prepared by the students. In its endeavour to enhance practical understanding for students, RGSOIPL has yet another time taken a unique approach not typically done in other law schools. Our law school students have the best benefit of being in an IIT system by meeting face to face the institute inventors who are working on high-end technologies and also understand the entire process of converting the invention disclosure to the patent application,” remarked Dean of the School Prof. Goutam Saha.

The process involved studying the invention disclosure and preparing the patent application with the claims in line with the statutory requirements under patent law and the examination practice. An innovator from IIT Kharagpur also participated in the session so that technical queries in relation to research works could be clarified.

“Students of the law school have been involved in conducting patentability searches, participating in inventor interview meets to enhance practical knowledge. Further, as part of the Legal Aid and IP Facilitation Cell, they have been working along with the faculty of the School in conducting IP search and analytics,” said Prof. M Padmavati, Former Head of the School. She further opined on the background of the LL.B honours students who are from the engineering or science background and pursuing specialization in IP Law.

The exercise was facilitated by the IPR Cell of IIT Kharagpur. The drafted claims and patent specifications were evaluated by the patent attorney of the Institute. The patent attorney provided students important insights into the drafting of patent specifications and claims including the cross-jurisdiction practice. The session was conducted with utmost regard to safeguarding IP and maintaining IP compliance.

To know more visit: http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/department/IP

Contact:

School: dean@rgsoipl.iitkgp.ac.in Media & Communications Cell: media@iitkgp.ac.in

Media Coverage

Data Quest	ABP Education	UNI
Shiksha	India Today

Paper chase

Economic Times Outlook Daily World Inc42 Hindustan Times

Like many other sectors, Artificial Intelligence is all set to impact jurisprudence. In countries such as USA, Britain, Japan, Singapore and Australia, it is already changing the way lawyers do business. AI is being used to perform legal research, review documents during litigation and conduct due diligence, analyse contracts to determine whether they meet pre-determined criteria and to even predict outcomes. AI is yet to sufficiently penetrate the legal field in India though. But that may soon change.

At IIT Kharagpur, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering is conducting a slew of research work on the application of AI in the legal field. A recently released paper by the research group on the ‘Identification of Rhetorical Roles of Sentences in Indian Legal Documents’ won the prestigious ‘Best Paper Award’ at JURIX 2019, the International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, held in Madrid during December 11-13, 2019. For more than 30 years, the annual JURIX conference has provided an international forum for research on the intersection of Law, Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems.

The research team at the CSE Department has used a novel method to automate the reading of a legal document by using a more evolved Machine Learning technique. Instead of the usual ‘Conditional Random Fields’ that use handcrafted features to train the machine, they have used two deep neural models to understand the rhetorical roles of sentences in a legal case judgment.

Automatically understanding the role of sentences in a legal case judgment is important as it can help in several downstream tasks such as summarization of legal judgments, legal search, case law analysis and other functions necessary for legal research. For a country like India, which uses a common law system that prioritizes the doctrine of legal precedent over statutory law, and where legal documents are often written in an unstructured way, the difference AI can bring is phenomenal, says Prof. Saptarshi Ghosh of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, who is leading the team.

Taking judgments from the Supreme Court of India, the team has segmented the 50 documents by labeling sentences using multiple human annotators (three senior law students from IIT Kharagpur’s Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law), performing extensive analysis of the human-assigned labels and then developing a high quality gold standard corpus to train the machine to carry out the task. “We use this annotated dataset in our experiments to automate the task of assigning semantic roles to sentences,” says the paper.

As mentioned before, prior attempts to automate identification of rhetorical roles of sentences in legal documents have depended on handcrafted features such as linguistic cue phrases indicative of a particular rhetorical role. These features depend on legal expert knowledge which is expensive to obtain. Besides, these features are often developed keeping in mind one specific domain. The neural methods used by Prof. Ghosh’s team automatically learn the features given sufficient amount of data and can be used across domains.

The two models used are – Hierarchical BiLSTM model and Hierarchical BiLSTM-CRF model. The models, which undertake a seven-class labeling, are seen to perform better in the task of classification than baseline ML methods that use handcrafted features. The performance of the models is compared based on the 50 manually annotated documents by using standard metrics of evaluation for the performance of the algorithms. The results show that the “latent features learnt by the neural models are better than the hand-crafted features used in prior works,” says Prof. Ghosh. Not only that, the comparison between the automated and human-generated labellings show that the former reflect the same confusion around labels in which there is confusion among the human annotators. In other words, using the neural models, the machine correctly identifies the subjective rhetorical roles of sentences.

Prof. Ghosh’s team consists of his students, Paheli Bhattacharya and Shounak Pal, as well as researchers from the Tata Research Development and Design Centre, Pune, and Swansea University, United Kingdom. Automating the identification of rhetorical roles of sentences in legal judgments, which will go a long way to aid legal research, is only one facet of the team’s efforts to enhance the application of AI in the legal field. Prof. Ghosh’s team, particularly Paheli, is using network and text analysis to understand if two legal documents are similar – which will further enhance the automation of legal research.

“We are trying to build an AI system which can give guidance to the common man about which laws are being violated in a given situation, or if there is merit in taking a particular situation to court, so that legal costs can be minimized. Together with experts at RGSOIPL, we will also try to use AI to investigate pendency in Indian courts and its solution,” says Prof. Ghosh, who says that given that IIT Kharagpur has its own law school, it is uniquely suited to carry out research along these lines.

The project is being supported by the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB) of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, under the project, ‘NYAYA: A Legal Assistance System for Legal Experts and the Common Man in India’. The project, which started in June 2019 and will continue till 2022, is being conducted jointly by IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur.

Raising awareness

On August 2, 2019, IIT Kharagpur won recognition as ‘IP Campus of the Year (Non Legal) 2019” at the Intellectual Property Fest, an event organized by IP Promotion Outreach Foundation. The award acknowledged a campus that had made outstanding contribution to spreading awareness in the field of Intellectual Property law, rights and practice in the last academic year.

IPPOF is a knowledge-sharing and training arm in Intellectual Property with two decades of expertise in this domain and has been working on networking and implementation, and increasing awareness through seminars and online guidance sessions. It believes that the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise sector needs to focus on commercialization of technology, promotion of innovative products through IPR protection, implementation, awareness and training.

IIT Kharagpur thinks similarly, although its focus does not devolve on any one sector. The Institute endeavours to promote and facilitate IP activities within the Institute and around the campus. It has taken several initiatives to build up community IP, raising awareness among IP creators and enforcement personnel. The Institute also connects inventors with industries and facilitates the transfer of technologies invented or created in the Institute. The Technology Transfer Group, a student run body, of IIT Kharagpur facilitates IP awareness activities.

Over the past year, there have been several workshops and interactive sessions held at IIT Kharapgur in order to give researchers and inventors a broad overview of patent laws in different countries, guide them on how to file patents and protect their IP. For example, an IPR workshop for students and researchers of the Departments of Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, G.S. Sanyal School of Telecommunication, School of Medical Science and Technology and Centre for Educational Technology was conducted February 3, 2018, with distinguished patent advocate, Mr. Naren Thapetta, as the special guest speaker. In another session last August on “Roadmap for Patent Creation”, attended by more than a hundred researchers of the Institute, they were taught the fundamentals of patent creation and patent filing procedure in two sessions. There was a similar workshop on IP Management of Academic and Research Institute taken by faculty of Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law in March this year.

Workshop on IP Powerhouse: the fuel for startups (2nd March 2019) Dr.Malathi Lakshmi Kumaran, Executive Director, Lakshmisri Law Firm, New Delhi

Faculty of RGSOIPL have conducted short-term courses and workshops to disseminate information and train academicians and even personnel on IP rights and issues. For example, the short-term course on “Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Law” in February 2019 that taught participants from various institutes of national importance the importance of IP protection. Participants were encouraged to establish IPR Cell in their institute and file IPs in biotechnology. An IPR workshop for for Swami Vivekananda State Police Academy (SVSPA), Kolkata in January 2019 saw the participation of several police personnel, including Deputy Superintendent of Police, Police Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors. There was also a two day training workshop on IPR conducted for the National Defense Academy for Production, Nagpur to train junior and senior level officers in IP.

IIT Kharagpur has developed an online portal to facilitate the protection of Geographical Indication to build up community IP and emphasize IP creation that empowers the marginalized people. The Institute is pursuing several GI cases. Take the ongoing work on GoynaBori, a potential GI.

Part B registration for ‘Joynagar Moa’, a GI of West Bengal has also been initiated based on the visits to geographical location. Initial work on the registration of Kalkatti Jewellery, a potential GI has been started. Similarly, documentation work has been undertaken with respect to Axomiya Jewellery of Assam.

As many as 62 patents have been filed at the patent office of the Institute in 2018-19 in the key categories of agriculture, biotechnology, chemical, electronics, electrical and mechanical engineering and by the School of Medical Science and Technology. Every year, IIT Kharagpur celebrates the World IP Day on April 26 to raise IP awareness among student and researchers and felicitating the inventors whose patent has been granted.

Prof. C. Retna Raj, Professor-in-Charge of IPR & IR at the Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy wing of IIT Kharagpur said, “The IPPO award is a recognition for developing in-house IP ecosystem through awareness and promotional activities, the pioneering steps taken by IIT Kharagpur to build up community IP and sensitizing the surrounding social stratum and creating awareness among IP creators & enforcement personnel.”