Garima Dhankar(*) PUTTING THE “PATENT ILLEGALITY” SAGA TO REST Several grounds for setting aside an arbitral award are enumerated in Section 34 of the A&C Act, Public Policy being one of them. Supreme Court categorized the meaning of public policy in Renusagar Power Co. v. General Electric Co. into three heads namely (i) fundamental policy of Indian law, (ii) the interests of India, or (iii) justice or morality. The 2015 amendment vested the court with the power to vacate an award based on “patent illegality”. This ground is roughly equivalent to “justice and morality”, which is a subset o ..read more

Garima Dhankar (*) Introduction The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“Arbitration Act”) was enacted on August 16, 1996. Over these 26 years, India’s arbitral framework has shown tremendous progress, effectively contributing to the enhancement of the nation’s landscape of dispute resolution. Simultaneously, India has adeptly nurtured its growth as a rapidly progressing economic force, solidifying its role as a significant participant in international trade and commerce. Given these emerging circumstances, it becomes imperative that our arbitration regime not only continues to cater to th ..read more

Avantika Tiwari (*) Introduction In both common parlance and the context of antitrust or competition law, ‘gun jumping’ alludes to acting prematurely. Particularly, it is the commencement of actions in furtherance of combination transactions between the parties involved, without the approval of the Competition Commission of India (“CCI”). Under the Competition Act, 2002, gun jumping as an offence has not been explicitly defined. Nevertheless, the definition of ‘combination’ read in conjunction with the powers accorded to the CCI for penalizing parties that jump the gun shed a considerable amou ..read more

Khushboo Sharma & Dalima Pushkarna (*) ______________________________ Introduction: Recently, the Singapore Court of Appeal (“CA”) in Anupam Mittal v. Westbridge Ventures II Investment Holdings (“Westbridge case”), via judgement dated January 6, 2023, clarified that subject matter arbitrability at the pre-award stage is to be determined by a composite approach. The composite approach entails a two-stage process. Initially, the law of the arbitration agreement is examined. Once this stage is complied with, the next step involves examining the law of the seat. This approach requires the disp ..read more

Rahul Kumar & Aditya Singh [i] Introduction A High-Level Committee under Justice B N Srikrishna was set up to review the institutionalization of arbitration mechanism in India. One of the key recommendations of the Committee was to set up a permanent arbitration bench to deal with such commercial matters, in the domain of the court. This part of the piece aims at showing how creating a permanent tribunal would help resolve the various problems that currently plague the arbitration scenario of the country. It will further aim to provide suggestions as to how the powers of this Permanent tri ..read more

Archita Sharma [i] Introduction In April 2019, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s (UNCITRAL) Working Group III (WG III) concluded in its report that the current system of investor -State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) requires reforms. The findings of the committee affirmed the long-standing complaints about the ISDS system raised by multiple states. Amid these concerns, the European Union (EU) in 2018 gave the European Commission (EC) the mandate to negotiate the establishment of a Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) on its behalf. An MIC presents a complete overhaul of the ..read more

Aditya Puri & Shubham Gandhi [i] The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (“the Act”) provides for the grant of interim measures vide Sections 9 and 17. Section 9 rests the power with the civil court, whereas section 17 empowers the arbitral tribunal to grant such measures to the parties. By the Amendment Act of 2015, the parliament bestows equal powers to both forums relating to interim measures. A significant amendment was the insertion of Section 9(3), which restricts the court’s power to grant interim measures once an arbitral tribunal is constituted. However, the restriction to the ..read more

Kunwar Arpit Singh [i] The Competition Amendment Bill, 2022 (The Bill) has proposed deal value threshold provisions to ensure combination transactions in the digital markets do not escape CCI's scrutiny. However, it has not been clarified what the applicability of the de minimis exemptions (exemptions provided to agreements between firms having insignificant market shares with a negligible influence on the market) will be once the bill is enacted. The bill is silent on whether the combinations qualifying for De Minimis exemptions can escape the scrutiny of the Competition Commission of India ..read more

Nityesh Dadhich [i] Introduction Despite the economic havoc caused by the pandemic & a series of lockdowns and restrictions, the Indian stock market doubled itself and touched new heights in 2021. The last year proved to be the best IPO Year over the past 20 years, raising over 1.18 Trillion Rupees through IPOs. Differential Voting Right (DVR) shares (explained here) enable the promoter group of a company to raise equity without diluting their control over the company. In order to attract investments, DVRs are offered at a discount and they return higher dividends in comparison to ordinary ..read more

Apurva Singhi [i] Arbitrability of IPR Disputes in other Jurisdictions: A Comparative Analysis There are four generally recognised practices relating to arbitration of IPR disputes which have been adopted by states. These range from liberal to restrictive approaches. First, some countries restrict the arbitration of all IPR disputes. While this is not a widespread practice, South Africa is one such nation that follows it, and makes all disputes relating to patents non-arbitrable. Second, some jurisdictions follow a practice of selective arbitration of IPR disputes. In this method, issues invol ..read more