Book

Description

The Award, Not the Right: Arbitrability of Intellectual Property Disputes in India Can an Indian arbitrator decide an intellectual property dispute? Since Eros in 2016, the Bombay and Delhi High Courts have given opposite answers. The Supreme Court’s Vidya Drolia test can be read either way, and Mangayarkarasi in 2025 has settled only part of the question. This book follows the case law from Booz Allen to the latest High Court decisions. It compares the position in the United States, England and Wales, and Singapore. It then takes up the questions that remain open: whether patent validity can be raised in arbitration, who owns the right, what happens when the arbitration agreement itself is disputed, and why objections that the dispute is not arbitrable are often heard only years later, when the award is challenged. Its central argument is that a court should ask what the award will do to people who are not parties, and not what kind of right is in dispute. The book ends with two routes to reform: a larger bench of the Supreme Court, or a statute modelled on Singapore’s, with a draft text.