Book by law school students ‘debunks’ IPR myth

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THE latest debate in the legal world is that intellectual property right (IPR) laws, meant to protect original creations, are serving private and not public interest.
In order to highlight this fact, two students from Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), Gandhinagar, have authored a book on IPR laws. The book, Copyright Law Deskbook Knowledge, Access and Development, by Akhil Prasad and Aditi Agarwala examines the growing significance of IPR in today's knowledge-based economy. †œIn the chapter 'Debunking the Myth,' we have argued that the term intellectual property is a misnomer and should be replaced with the term intellectual asset. The term 'property' is tilted more towards private interests," says Prasad.
The duo has also drawn attention to the fact that currently converting any book into Braille comes under copyright infringement and should be changed. "Whenever you convert a book into any other form without the author's knowledge, it is infringement of the copyright law and this holds true for books converted into Braille as well. Since it is difficult to take permission for each book before it is converted into Braille, we have drawn attention to the fact that this issue needs to be addressed," says Agarwala.
Both Prasad and Agarwala started taking interest in IPR laws while pursuing their internship in Mumbai. "We had prepared an exhaustive 70-page petition on IPR during our internship. When we showed it to our former registrar he suggested we convert it into a booklet. However, we soon realised that there was a lot to write about and many issues needed to be addressed. So, we decided to author a 400-page book instead," says Agarwala.
On what makes this book different, Prasad says, "There are only 10 books in India on IPR laws. And we take pride in the fact that we belong to the first batch of GNLU. It is the first time in the history of law schools in India that students of the first graduating batch have authored a book."
Elaborating on some of the other aspects of the book, Prasad says, "Apart from the technical details, we have also tried questioning the relevance of these laws. The book is divided into four sections — each of them dealing with the role of IPR, Indian and international copyright laws and case studies."