IDIA Founder and Professor Shamnad Basheer is no more [Update]

IDIA Founder and Professor Shamnad Basheer passed away today in a tragic accident. Shamnad was in Chickmagalur while this accident happened. Due to the weather conditions, efforts are being made to retrieve the body. He was 43 years old.

Update 19:30: Basheer had gone to Baba Budan Giri for a health check-up on July 28. He was scheduled to return to Bangalore on August 5, 2019. When friends and relatives could not contact him, a search party was sent to Chickmagalur on August 7, 2019. With the help of local police, the search party was able to trace the car.

Update 19:47: Initial reports indicate asphyxiation as the reason.

Update 19:54: Police and Ambulance are near the car. Due to heavy rains and landslide, they are not able to reach the car. Efforts are being made to safely retrieve the body from the car.

Update 20:09 : The body has been retrieved. The post mortem will happen tomorrow and the body will then be taken to Kerala for his last rites.

Born on May 14, 1976, Shamnad Basheer graduated from the National law school of India University, Bangalore. He then joined Anand and Anand, an intellectual property law firm in New Delhi, and worked on a variety of contentious and non-contentious IP matters.

Shamnad went on to do his post-graduate studies at the University of Oxford. He completed the BCL (as a Shell Centenary scholar) and MPhil with distinction.

He joined NUJS in 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property law. Prior to this, he was the Frank H Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school in Washington DC.

Basheer had intervened in the landmark Novartis case and has filed a number of other public interest litigation and took initiative to bring about changes in IPR regime and legal education in India.

In 2014, Prof. Shamnad Basheer was awarded the Infosys Science Foundation Prize, 2014 for his contribution to the field of research in humanities.

In 2011, Basheer, founder of Spicy IP, was selected as one of the top 50 global IP leaders, who are shaping the future of intellectual property by the magazine, Managing Intellectual Property along with co-bloggers Prashant Reddy and Sumathi Chandrashekaran.