Luthra & Luthra has formed an Anti-Piracy & Anti Counterfeiting (APAC) practice, which will be headed by Senior Partner Vijay Sondhi and be driven by IP Partner Ameet Datta.

The APAC starts-off with 6 new entrants, out of which 5 are former lawyers at Anand and Anand. The five new entrants are Jay Bhardwaj and Munish Mehra who join as Senior Associates and Amit Upadhyay, Vaishali Kakra and Birender Bikram Singh join as Associates. Mihira Sood also joins as an Associate after gaining experience with an independent advocate.

The new recruits combine industry specific anti- piracy expertise in the areas of IT / software, electronics, luxury brands, FMCG, automobile & garments sectors. IP & civil litigation lawyers Vaishali Kakra, Mihira Sood and Birender Bikram Singh also join the enforcement practice.

Speaking to Bar & Bench, IP Partner Ameet Datta said, “We decided as a full-service firm, as other practices are concerned a huge amount of investment has been done in terms of ensuring that the standards and quality delivered are amongst the best, so we decided it was incumbent on us as a part of the IP practice to ensure that Luthra has an IP practice which is better than offered through IP boutiques.

Datta added on to say, “The advantage of an IP practice in a full service law firm is that there is a lot of commercial acumen that a special IP practice will have, but there is always a downside to a full service IP practice or rather that’s the perception, that its merely a commercial add-on or a commercial transaction unit and not an IP practice in the traditional sense. The enforcement practice to my mind is just one such effort to have a perfect IP practice in terms of an IP boutique or a full service firm. We wanted a focussed enforcement practice that lives and breathes enforcement. The focus was to have a specialised stand-alone IP practice with no room for confusion. We have 8 members on the APAC team and this number is bigger than even boutique practices contribution to enforcement practices. We intend to have a larger team when we kick-off. The enforcement practice is already engaged with clients and is up and running. The addition of the new members brings Luthra & Luthra's IP strength to 23 lawyers”.

Rajiv K. Luthra, Managing Partner of Luthra & Luthra said, “Jay, Munish, Amit, Mihira and Vaishali add an amazing strength to the firm's IP expertise. With piracy levels across different industries such as film / music to software ranging between 55 percent to 65 percent of legitimate business, an enforcement practice has become an essential part of the firms' efforts to protect client interests. Significantly, Luthra & Luthra, today is the only full service firm with a focused Anti-piracy practice and this is in line with our vision of offering world class expertise areas to our clients”.