Pro bono work is increasingly finding a place in the schedules of busy Indian lawyers
Rebecca Abraham reports
In 2007, when Novartis filed two petitions in Madras High Court challenging the decision of the Chennai patent office to deny it a patent for its cancer drug Gleevec, it was able to marshal the services of three senior counsel: Soli Sorabjee, Shanti Bhushan and Habibullah Badsha. Opposing the Gleevec patent were nine respondents, who between them could muster only four senior counsel.
Respondent number six, the Cancer Patients Aid Association, had to make do without a senior counsel, which, as the judgment in this closely watched case was to show, was not much of a handicap. For not only did they have the formidable Anand Grover by their side, but he was appearing for them pro bono.
Arguing “with tremendous ease”, as noted in the judgment, Grover cut through the complex world of patents, intellectual property and international treaties to successfully help block the Gleevec patent. And all of this without a billing clock ticking ominously by his side.
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