Q&A with Pravin Anand, managing partner, Anand and Anand
What do you feel sets your firm apart from your peers?
- The ability to collaborate with persons from different disciplines, for example, lawyers and engineers or departments such litigation, trademarks and patents department or to form teams with competing firms on big matters
- A multi-disciplinary approach. Apart from knowledge of law, our ability to have an additional skill (e.g. law and engineering/science or law and finance for valuation and commercialization or law and business management etc.).
- A third skill is what we seem to have inculcated -namely a curious mind. Our firm members are keen in learning and acquiring skills in diverse fields creating a right atmosphere for innovation.
What is the key to being a successful firm in the IP space in your market?
The firm has consciously developed deeper understanding of both structural and cultural barriers towards innovation. This understanding helps in taking full advantage of the modern mind set of judges in the back drop of the Commercial Courts Act and other changes that have added huge speed in the dispute resolution process; the hunger for high technology and its smart use; and behavioural understanding in an increasingly intolerant and competitive environment.
What are some notable example of work that your firm has done in the past year?
In the last two years alone 3 of the top finally decreed cases namely, Merck v. Glenmark, Roche v. Cipla and Philips first SEP Judgment, the top damages orders on compensatory, punitive and aggravative damages, contempt jurisprudence and the development of unique remedies (the tree planting order, providing the sanitary towels to adolescent girls in government schools, providing sports equipment’s such as footballs to underprivileged schools and installation of water purifiers) which go beyond the standard statutory reliefs, have created a strong intellectual property enforcement wave. This is a step towards promoting public interest giving full advantage to the IP owner for their corporate social responsibilities. Perhaps it is for the first time that public interest has been a focal attention through IP enforcement. The firm’s involvement in assisting in policy and legislative work along with its efforts to create love for IP is unsurpassed.
