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GW Law School has established broad-based
contacts and relationships in India and, as anyone
working on the “India Project” at
the Law School will tell you, it is only the beginning.
Much of the work so far has been based on issues
of intellectual property law and international
law, two areas of national prominence at the Law
School. These issues have arisen from the extraordinary
growth in India’s expanding technological
and financial sectors during the past decade.
As India, the world’s largest democracy,
has grappled with the changes called for in its
domestic legal system as well as its international
legal obligations, the India Project has launched
a major comparative law program of engagement
and study.
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Raj Davé, LLM
’03, of Morrison & Foerster (right),
Sasha Rao of Ropes & Gray (left), and
other India Project delegation members meet
a Supreme Court advocate outside of the
Indian Supreme Court.
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The project addresses questions including: How
should the Indian legal system be best structured
to enhance and support the innovative skills of
its talented and highly educated citizens? What
changes in the law and enforcement mechanisms
does India need to make to meet its obligations
under the Trips Treaty, the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the
World Trade Organization?
In 2003, GW Law faculty and alumni launched the
India Project to focus particularly on these issues
and others related to IP in India. The work of
the India Project and the network of relationships
it has forged among Indian lawyers, judges, business
leaders, and academics and their counterparts
from the United States and other parts of the
world has paved the way for the next step, a major
interdisciplinary India Studies Center. Not one
to rest on the Law School’s remarkable and
unique success in India, Dean Frederick M. Lawrence
says the Law School will continue to build ties
in India through a new legal education center.
The India Studies Center, to be launched shortly,
will focus on a range of issues relevant to U.S.-Indian
legal relations beyond IP, including labor law,
government procurement, environmental law, corporate
law, and constitutional law. In addition to strengthening
GW Law’s reputation as a leader in international
and comparative legal studies, the center is expected
to contribute significantly to comparative scholarship
of relevance to all aspects of the respective
societies, ranging from business endeavors to
individual rights to national security matters.
Dean Frederick
M. Lawrence and Judge Barbara Rothstein,
director of the U.S. Federal Judicial Center,
outside the Indian Supreme Court.
Susan Karamanian
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“The India Project already has enabled
us to develop the most important comparative law
project in the field of intellectual property
among the United States, Europe, and India. We
hope to build on this project and create an India
Studies Center at the Law School that would become
the focal point for comparative American-Indian
law studies in the United States,” Lawrence
says.
The center will be modeled after the Law School’s
earlier successful work in India. For the past
three years, faculty members, alumni, and distinguished
members of the legal profession have collaborated
with members of industry, such as the Confederation
of Indian Industries, the U.S.-India Business
Council, and officials from private corporations,
to sponsor conferences, which thus far have been
held in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore,
and Hyderabad. The conferences have attracted
scholars, judges, lawyers, business leaders, and
government officials from around the world. The
dialogue has fostered better understanding of
the legal challenges India faces in light of rapid,
widespread growth in technological and creative
fields.
The India Project is in many ways the brainchild
of Raj Davé, LLM ’03, a partner at
Morrison & Foerster in Washington. Davé
donated his $5,000 Finnegan Prize, awarded for
excellence in IP writing, to the Law School. “I
wanted to contribute to the Law School in a way
that would also give back to India,” Davé
says.
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Randall Rader, JD
’78, a judge with the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit, presides
over a moot court at the New Delhi session
of the 2006 India Project Conference.
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Professor Martin Adelman, co-director of the
Law School’s IP Law Program, and Susan Karamanian,
associate dean for international and comparative
and legal studies, have led the project with Davé
by organizing delegations, attracting the involvement
of alumni and prominent legal experts, and welcoming
Indian scholars and diplomats to the Law School.
Adelman says the project’s work is happening
at a critical time in Indian legal development.
“In India our delegation meets with government
officials, educators, business leaders, and other
legal scholars to teach and discuss intellectual
property protection issues. These issues are of
critical importance in India as modern India moves
away from its socialist roots to a capitalist-based
economy that is now one of the most important
in the world,” Adelman says.
In addition to conferences, India Project initiatives
include a training program on patent law for judges
of the Indian High Courts at the National Judicial
Academy in Bhopal and meetings with high-level
Indian judges and policymakers such as Y.K. Sabharwal,
chief justice of the Indian Supreme Court. Kapil
Sibal, Indian minister of science and technology,
visited GW Law in April.
Associate Dean
Susan Karamanian greets a scientist accompanying
the Confederation of Indian Industries delegation
that visited the Law School in the spring.
They are joined by Indian Minister of Science
and Technology Kapil Sibal.
Claire Duggan
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Mock trials and moot courts, often attracting
large audiences and media coverage, are an element
of the India Project conferences that put education
into action, as audience members serve as juries.
Response to these programs has been highly positive,
says Randall Rader, JD ’78, a judge with
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit,
who has participated in the project since its
inception.
“These demonstrations and programs have
given the India Project and GW Law a name as one
of the leading intellectual forces in the IP debates
in India,” Rader says. “I am honored
and privileged to be associated with such an important
project with such potential to improve education
and legal administration in one of the world’s
most important emerging markets.”
Davé says those involved with the India
Project have witnessed “direct, amazing
changes” in Indian education and law during
the past three years, and that the initiatives
have strengthened U.S.-India relations. Plans
are already under way for activities in Mumbai
and Bangalore in January of 2007. “In the
future, we hope to help India create more ‘manpower’
in the form of well-trained patent attorneys and
stronger law schools that will educate IP lawyers.
We also want to use education to strengthen enforcement
of patent laws; enforcement is almost nonexistent
now,” Davé says. “We also want
to continue training at the judicial level.”
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Judge Randall Rader,
JD ’78, Moushami Joshi, LLM ’02,
Raj Davé, LLM ’03, and Professor
Martin Adelman during a break in the New
Delhi session in 2006
Susan Karamanian
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Building on this foundation, the Law School announced
in Bangalore in January of 2006 an agreement with
one of the world’s elite technology universities,
the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur,
to help develop the new Rajiv Gandhi School of
Intellectual Property Law in Kharagpur, India.
The Rajiv Gandhi law school will be the first
intellectual property law school in India, and
GW is the first American law school to co-sponsor
an Indian law school. While offering the LLB degree
(the JD equivalent), the Rajiv Gandhi law school
will focus on preparing Indian lawyers to manage
and take advantage of change, combining modern
classroom technology and innovative teaching methods
to provide lawyers with the skills to handle sophisticated
legal matters pertaining to complex commercial
transactions and cases. GW Law faculty members
and administrative resources are helping the Rajiv
Gandhi School in curriculum development, teaching
methods, co-curricular activities, library materials,
and the like. The relationship affords faculty
members from both schools the opportunity to collaborate
in all specialty areas, engage in comparative
scholarship, and most importantly, to learn from
each other.
The new India Studies Center will strengthen
the role of GW Law in India and broaden its reach
as more members of the GW community and those
beyond it, whether in India, the United States,
or other parts of the world, get involved in a
variety of fields. This exciting, path-breaking
work is just one way GW Law remains ahead of the
curve and sets the standard for excellence in
IP law and international and comparative law.
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