Dr Julius Kopsch Archive and Interwar International Copyright Discourse (1920s–1950s)
Salam/Namaskar, It is curious how a small email, a simple “hello,” or a genuine ask can sometimes catapult a curious conversation, and sporadically even a new camaraderie. Voilà, such is life! This happened to me recently. I was recently working on my PhD chapter dealing with the interwar copyright discourse, and one name kept popping…
A French Kiss for International Copyright: the French Decree 1852 (verbatim reproduced)
(This post was first published at IPRMENTLAW – another blog I have been associated with for the last few years.) Bonjour, Comment ça va? (Well … my French exhausts itself almost immediately after this … Alas) But speaking of things unmistakably French, here’s something I wanted to share and briefly talk about: the 1852 French…
Happy Independence Day, 2026, but what about the Republic of Unfree Minds?
As today is India’s Independence Day—a day that holds, perhaps, more meaning than we can presently calculate—I have been thinking about swaraj: self-rule. Independence is often understood in a political sense. Freedom from colonial rule, precisely. But … is a mind still ruled by colonial shadows, caste, gender, class, religious pride, and other thought structures…
Finally, the cat is out of the bag – ANI v. Open AI judgment pronounced!
Let me start with a disclosure. I represented one of the intervenors in this matter, Flux Labs, an AI enabled commerce start up. This post however is on principles, and the jurisprudential significance of the decision in ANI Media v. OpenAI (2026 DHC 5900), because the principles are what will outlive the parties. 1. The…
WIPO, Wandering, and a Week with the Archives: Some Quick Notes from Geneva
Namaskar. I write this as I return from a whirlwind week in Geneva—a city I had long longed to visit. Partly because of my PhD work, partly because of its place in the history of international (IP) law, and partly because some cities acquire an almost mythical quality when you spend years reading about them…
Dr Tharoor at JLF Belfast left me Problematising Indian Personality Rights Jurisprudence
Salam/Namaskar, This post is not from me but from Niharika Salar, a PhD candidate at Queen’s University Belfast, working on questions around identity and geographical indication law in the traditional craft space under the supervision of Professor Giancarlo Frosio and Dr Pratyush Nath Upreti. Niharika, besides being a sagacious scholar with teaching and research experience…
A Curious Copyright Footnote of 1938 Proceedings of the American Society of International Law at Its Annual Meeting
Bonjour, I found something today, not that dazzling or dramatic (like I found before), but perhaps a useful little footnote at the very least. While the postwar shift in U.S. copyright policy—from pirate nation to IP policeman—is hardly news, it is still striking to see it stated so plainly on record by Richard C. De…
A Quick Note on Archival Research at the British Library
Salam/Namaskar, A few months ago, while working at the British Library in the UK for my PhD research, Akshat suggested that I put together a short note, a quick guide, of sorts, on conducting archival research there. I must note at the outset that I remain a novice in this space, learning as I go,…
An Interesting 1965 Piece: International Copyright and the Soviet Union by Allan P. Cramer
Namaskar/Salam So the other day …. I fell, most unwillingly but quite happily, down a rather curious piece (though I confess I only truly read it now, as one does with the more tempting of intellectual distractions! Alas, life is such). It was a piece from 1967 in the Duke Law Journal, a slender sixteen-page…
Interesting Reading: 19th Century’s Conference Culture and Belgium’s Soft Power
(This post continues a series where I share readings that I’ve found useful or, at the very least, intellectually stimulating. See here and here.) Salam/Namaskar The nineteenth century was somewhat a moment for international law. It was marked by a distinctive, I’d say, thought style in which organising international congresses to address perceived “social problems”…
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