GW law makes inroads to India

Posted Thursday, February 2 2006 02:51:17 am

By Riki Parikh
Managing Editor

The GW Law School is teaming up with one of India's top technical schools to establish the country's first international property law school, according to media reports from the region.

Law School Dean Frederick Lawrence signed a technical collaboration agreement with the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur on Sunday in Bangalore, marking a first step in a cooperative effort between the United States and India to establish intellectual property rights in the Asian country.

“IIT Kharagpur asked GW Law to be a consultant in forming their new Intellectual Property program and it was a perfect fit to accept their invite as GW Law is so strong in both IP and international law,” said Claire Duggan, assistant director of public relations for the Law School.

The new school, which will be called the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, is a joint collaboration between GW Law School and IIT Kharagpur. It is being funded by a Vinod Gupta, an alumnus of IIT, Kharagpur, at the request of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development.

“This technical collaboration agreement with GWU in the areas of curricula, syllabus design, faculty training, teaching, [and] research… will help greatly in quickly bringing up the law school of IIT Kharagpur to world class standards,” said Professor Kalyan Chakravarti, the law school’s project leader, in a release.

The establishment of the law school and the agreement between the two universities is part of GW Law’s India Project, which strives to create interactions between the world’s leading academics, industry leaders, lawyers, judges and policy makers in IP, said Professor Martin J. Edelman, director of the Indian Project at GW.

“One of the goals of the India Project… was to work closely and cooperatively with Indian judges to ensure not just enaction but enforcement of patent laws,” Edelman told India Abroad. “Because it’s all fine to have good laws but the important thing is to enforce them.”

Lawrence and other GW professors of law led joined a 61-member delegation that toured India this week to promote intellectual property rights and educate Indian leaders on how to properly enforce their newly adopted copyright laws, which were passed in 1999.

The delegation is composed of international science professors, patent lawyers, judges and corporate intellectual property experts, including Judge Randall R. Rader of the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and several other corporate leaders who specialize in intellectual property.

Professors are expected to return early next week.

GW’s Law School is recognized world-wide as providing the first and best IP education. IIT Kharagpur, meanwhile, is one of India’s most recognizable engineering technology schools. The new law school will work in conjunction with IIT’s recently opened business school to provide various resources in the emerging field.