Shamnad Basheer

Shamnad Basheer (born 14 May 1976) is an Indian legal scholar and founder of SpicyIP blog. Basheer is also the founder of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education - a trust which works on making legal education accessible for underprivileged students. Basheer was a Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and the Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University Law School. and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Center (OIPRC). He founded several initiatives such as SpicyIP, IDIA, P-PIL and Lex Biosis. Basheer had intervened in landmark Novartis case and filed a number of other public interest litigation and took initiative to bring about changes in IPR regime in India.

He graduated from India's premier law school, the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He then joined Anand and Anand, a leading intellectual property law firm in New Delhi, and worked on a variety of contentious and non contentious IP matters before being called upon to head the firm's IT and Telecommunications Law Division, India. Whilst in practice, the IFLR 1000 guide rated him as a leading technology lawyer.

Prof Basheer went on to do his post-graduate studies at the University of Oxford. He completed the BCL (as a Shell Centenary scholar) and MPhil with distinction; his thesis dealing with biotechnology and patent law in India was awarded the second prize in a writing contest held by the Stanford Technology Law Review. He is currently reading for the DPhil (PhD) as a Wellcome Trust scholar. In the past, he has been an invited research fellow at the Institute of Intellectual Property (IIP), Tokyo, an International Bar Association (IBA) scholar and an Inter Pacific Bar Association (IPBA) scholar.

He has been an editor of the Oxford Commonwealth Law Journal (OUCLJ) and a founding member of EDIP (Electronic Database of Intellectual Property). His research interests include intellectual property issues (particularly patents and copyrights) and innovation/creativity policy, public health, international trade issues, competition law and issues around legal education.

He has spoken on these themes at various conferences and also published papers in leading technology journals such as the Yale Technology Law Journal, IPQ (Intellectual Property Quarterly), EIPR (European Intellectual Property Law Review) and JILP (Journal of law technology and policy).

• Infosys Science Foundation Award, 2014.
• In 2016, Society of Indian Law Firms awarded Shamnad Basheer with Legal Education Innovation Award 2016 in recognition of innovation and leadership in the development of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) and promoting legal careers among the under-privileged.
• 2007: Awarded the first place in a writing contest held by ATRIP for an article dealing with the Novartis-Gleevec patent case in India.
• 2004: Awarded the second prize in a writing contest held by the Stanford Technology Law Review for an article on biotechnology and patent law in India.
• 2004: Awarded the MS Lin Scholarship to attend the Inter Pacific Bar Association (IPBA) conference in Seoul.
• 2003: Awarded the Wellcome Trust studentship prize and the Clarendon Scholarship for the Mphil/Dphil at Oxford.
• 2003: Awarded a distinction on the BCL at Oxford.
• 2003: Awarded the IBA (International Bar Association) scholarship.
• 2002: Awarded the Shell Centenary-British Chevening Scholarship for the BCL at Oxford.
• 2002: Rated as one of the leading technology lawyers in India by the IFLR 1000 guide (a Euromoney publication) in 2002.
• 2001: Awarded the second best prize by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) for an article on "Internet and Intellectual Property Rights".

• http://www.infosys-science-foundation.com/prize/laureates/2014/shamnad-basheer.asp
• "Society of Indian Law Firms and Menon Institute of Legal Advocacy Training honour Arun Jaitley". 

• Basheer, Shamnad (2013). The Invention of an Investment Incentive for Pharmaceutical Innovation. University of Oxford. 
• Basheer, Shamnad; Wilkof, Neil, eds. (2012). Overlapping Intellectual Property Rights. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191642890.