Karnataka High Court Forms a Sub-Committee to Draft IPD Rules

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Praharsh Gour

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Jun 25, 2024, 5:15:30 AM (4 days ago) Jun 25

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In an important development, the Karnataka High Court on June 20 released a notification forming a sub-committee to draft rules for establishing an IP Division. The sub-committee comprises Registrar (Judicial), Karnataka High Court (the position is presently held by Mr. E. Rajeeva Gowda) and Prof. Dr. Arul Scaria, Associate Professor, NLSIU, Bangalore. With this, the Karnataka High Court seems to be the latest High Court on its way to establish a dedicated IP Division. In the gamut of high courts, we have seen Delhi High Court and Madras High Court to already have functioning IP Divisions, with dedicated Rules, and Calcutta High Court with a draft set of Rules awaiting finalization.

Readers will recall that the practice of High Courts coming up with dedicated IP division was started after the Tribunals Reforms Act 2021, whereby the IPAB was dissolved and all the powers vested by it was transferred back to the Commercial Courts (see here for Prashant’s post on this). To overcome the uncertainty following the IPAB’s abolition, the Delhi High Court came up with its IPD Rules. The Rules were framed by a committee comprising Justice Pratibha M Singh and Justice Sanjeev Narula, after taking into consideration the concerns of different IP practitioners (see here). Similarly, the Madras High Court’s IP Division Rules were formulated on the recommendation of a committee comprising Justice M Sundar, Justice Abdul Quddhose and Justice Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy, assisted by IP lawyers Shuba Shiny, Sathish Kumar and M S Bharath (see here). With regard to the Calcutta High Court, I was informed by an anon reader that a committee was established to draft the IPD Rules. However, I am unable to locate the official notification establishing this committee. In case any reader knows more, I request you to please share any further details in the comments below.

It is refreshing to see that the Karnataka High Court took a slightly different route and decided to have an academician involved in the drafting of these Rules, making it one of the sporadic appointments of academicians in high stake issues. (To know more on such appointments by the Indian executive/ judiciary, I suggest readers refer to this (paywalled) op-ed by Prof. Prabhash Ranjan, and this post by Prashant on the intervention by Prof. Basheer in the Novartis case.) Also interestingly, Prof. Scaria was also previously appointed as an “academic” expert by the Delhi High Court to aid it in the interpretation of Section 52(1)(za) of the Copyright Act (see here for the post on the final report submitted by Prof. Scaria in that matter). As a side note, It was also nice to see the Court specifically naming their nomination Sourav M., Law Clerk, as the assistant for the sub-committee.

Coming back to the notification, it states that after drafting the Rules, the same shall be placed before the High Court and District Judiciary Rules Committee for their approval. However, it doesn’t specify the deadline by when the sub-committee has to place the draft Rules before the High Court and the Committee.

As the new sub-committee kickstarts its tenure, we hope that it makes some robust rules especially on lesser discussed yet substantive issues (previously discussed here) pertaining to independent experts, right to audience, inclusion of legal researchers, accessibility and reasonable accommodation.