Introduction In August of 2025, the Supreme Court struck down the Indian Army’s policy of gender-based reservations in Judge Advocate General (JAG) posts on grounds of indirect discrimination ( Arshnoor Kaur v UOI ; para 93). This judgment draws attention to the fact that non-combat arms in the armed forces, like JAG, continue to have arbitrary gender-based distinctions in recruitment despite the Defence Ministry’s 2023 press release claiming that employment in the Indian ar

Children’s Right to Access Essential Medicines: Real or Rhetoric? “ Pediatrics does not deal with miniature men and women, with reduced doses and the same class of diseases in smaller bodies, but (…) it has its own independent range and horizon. ” – Abraham Jacobi, 1889 Owing to their immature physiological systems, drug response in children differs from that of adults. This necessitates pediatric-specific formulations. According to the latest census, 24%  of India’s populati

Introduction The recent World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Intellectual Property (IP) Finance Dialogue 2025  underscored the rising significance of intangible assets in the global economy  and fulfilling the economic potential of IP. Intellectual property is commonly understood as the creative utilisation of human intellect for developing goodwill, brand value, and scientific innovations. Its identity as an invaluable financial asset remains undermined. The curr

A Juxtaposition of the Past In the late fifteenth century, as the printed word began to eclipse the illuminated manuscript, a storm of intellectual unease swept across Europe. One storm of intellectual unease rumbled in the mind of Filippo. He admired books but despised printers. To Filippo, printers were not artisans but exceptional and foreign interlopers. He considered them to be lowly, typical, awfully commercial, beggar-thieves that had no care for language or learning,

Introduction   Traditional Cultural Expressions (‘ TCEs’ ) as defined  (page 6) by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (‘ WIPO’ ), ‘ may include music, dance, art, designs, names, signs and symbols, performances, ceremonies, architectural forms, handicrafts and narratives, or many other artistic or cultural expressions’ . To this abstract definition,   WIPO extends the scope even further by including any ‘ form’  in which traditional culture might be expressed, and

Introduction As the limits of trademark law are stretched with the rise of non-traditional marks, questions arise on how to reliably judge them in the courtroom without succumbing to subjectivity. With hurdles faced from registration to disproving confusion, uncertainty engulfs unconventional marks, especially in India. Since these marks are far less explored vis-à-vis the traditional visual marks, perhaps the way forward is to incorporate objective tools of neuroscience as a

The Novartis Precedent and the Ascent of the Therapeutic Efficacy Doctrine The Supreme Court of India's 2013 judgment in Novartis AG v. Union of India & Others  was the tipping point in the history of pharmaceutical patenting and international intellectual property law. One loosely phrased clause in the  Indian Patents Act , Section 3(d), was converted into a powerful doctrine that has, in turn, dictated the intellectual property rights-public health balance ever since. Thro

Introduction What will happen if the copyright law, made to protect creativity, becomes a weapon to silence it? This question came alive in a recent controversy between Asian News International (‘ANI’) and Mohak Mangal, a YouTuber, along with several prominent Indian social media creators in May 2025. They alleged ANI of leveraging copyright claims and forcing creators to pay large sums of money for using short clips of ANI in their content. In May 2025, YouTuber Mohak Mangal