Home › People › Faculty

Dr. Arul George Scaria

Associate Professor (On Lien)

Ph.D. (Munich)

Dr Arul George Scaria is an Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition (CIIPC). He is also an Affiliate Faculty of the CopyrightX program, which is a course offered under the auspices of the Harvard Law School, the HarvardX distance-learning initiative, and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. His key areas of interest and specialisation are innovation, intellectual property rights, and competition law.

Arul did his doctoral research at the International Max Planck Research School for Competition and Innovation (IMPRS-CI), an interdisciplinary doctoral program jointly offered by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Munich) and the Ludwig Maximilians Universität (Munich). For his doctoral research, he received the IMPRS-CI Scholarship from the Max Planck Institute. His doctoral research was an empirical legal study on copyright piracy in the Indian film industry and he was awarded the doctoral degree with summa cum laude (‘with the highest distinction’). His research was supervised by Prof. Josef Drexl (Director, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition), a globally renowned scholar in the fields of intellectual property and competition law.

His post-doctoral research at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium, under the guidance of Prof. Tom Dedeurwaerdere (Director, BIOGOV Research Unit, UCL), focused on the issue of open access to large scale research data and he was part of different EU funded projects. Arul has also worked as a CSIR-NIF Fellow in the IP management division of the National Innovation Foundation of India.

Arul has two single authored books to his credit - Piracy in the Indian Film Industry: Copyright and Cultural Consonance (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Ambush Marketing: Game within a Game (Oxford University Press, 2008). He has also contributed to different international journals and books by drawing from his research. Arul has made presentations in different international forums like the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the European Commission (EC), apart from speaking at different international conferences. He was a member of the advisory committee constituted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), India, in 2014 for addressing the copyright license issues for the open e-textbooks project of NCERT. He is currently a member of the IPR expert group constituted by Department of Science and Technology, Government of Rajasthan. He is also the co-chair of a thematic group constituted by the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister and the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for drafting the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2020 (STIP 2020) of India and this group looks at the issue of access to knowledge and resources.

Publications (selectively)

Books (sole author)

Piracy in the Indian Film Industry: Copyright and Cultural Consonance (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Ambush Marketing- Game Within A Game (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Articles and Book Chapters

Arul George Scaria, ‘International Exhaustion of Trademark Rights in India’ in Kung-Chung Liu (ed), Annotated Leading Trademark Cases in Major Asian Jurisdictions (Routledge, 2019)

Arul George Scaria and Shreyashi Ray, ‘Knowledge Sharing and the Sharing Economy in India’ in Kung-Chung Liu and Uday Racherla (eds), Innovation, Economic Development, and Intellectual Property in India and China (Springer, 2019).
Arul George Scaria and Kavya Susan Mammen, ‘Non-Traditional Marks on Pharmaceutical Products: Non-Traditional Barriers to Access to Medicine?’ in Irene Calboli and Martin Senftleben (eds), The Protection of Non-Traditional Trademarks (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Arul George Scaria and Mathews George, ‘Copyright and Typefaces’ in Enrico Bonadio and Nicola Lucchi (eds), Non-Conventional Copyright (Edward Elgar, 2018).
Arul George Scaria and Rishika Rangarajan, 'Fine-tuning the Intellectual Property Approaches to Fostering Open Science: Some Insights from India', WIPO Journal, 2016, Vol. 8, Issue 1, 109.
Arul George Scaria, ‘Converging Online and Class-Room Methods: A Promising Mode of Knowledge Sharing in Digital Age?’, Journal of the National Law University Delhi, 2016, Vol. 3, Issue 1, 93.
Arul George Scaria, ‘Online Piracy of Indian Movies: Is the Film Industry Firing at the Wrong Target? ’, Michigan State Law Review, 2013, Vol. 21, Issue 3, 647.
Arul George Scaria, ‘Does India Need Digital Rights Management Provisions or Better Digital Management Strategies?’, Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, 2012, Vol. 17, 463.
Arul George Scaria, ‘India Heading Towards a Major Copyright Overhaul’, GRUR Int., 2010, Issue 8-9, 663.

Reports

Arul George Scaria and Shreyashi Ray, Open Science India Report (pre-print), https://osf.io/th97c/
Arul George Scaria, Arianna Broggiato and Tom Dedeurwaerdere, Report on the IP Model Agreements for Pre-competitive Access to Microbial Genomic Research Databases (February 2014), Deliverable 8.4 of EU FP7 Project - Micro B3: Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology.
Arul George Scaria, Arianna Broggiato and Tom Dedeurwaerdere, IP Model Agreements for Pre-Competitive Access to Large-Scale Microbial Genomic Research Databases (January 2013), Deliverable 8.2 of EU FP7 Project - Micro B3: Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology.

Others (Op-eds/ blogposts/ book reviews/ case notes)

‘Where Credit Isn’t Due’, Indian Express (April 2, 2019), available at https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/javed-akhtar-lyrics-pm-narendra-modi-film-vivek-oberoi-5653582/.
‘Draft E-Commerce Policy: A 101 Guide to Decimating Digital Competition’, BloombergQuint (March 14, 2019), available at https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/draft-e-commerce-policy-a-101-guide-to-decimating-digital-competition.
(with Satheesh Menon and Shreyashi Ray), ‘Survey Findings Suggest Both Individuals and Institutions Can Do More to Promote Open Science Practices in India’, LSE Impact Blog (August 16, 2017), available at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/16/survey-findings-suggest-both-individuals-and-institutions-can-do-more-to-promote-open-science-practices-in-india/.
(with Anubha Sinha), ‘RCEP IP Chapter: A Serious Threat to Access to Knowledge/ Cultural Goods?’, Livelaw (July 27, 2017), available at: http://www.livelaw.in/rcep-ip-chapter-serious-threat-access-knowledge-cultural-goods/
‘Bias in Industry Funded Research: A Problem of Funding Source or Lack of Openness in Research?’ SPICYIP (November 5, 2016), available at https://spicyip.com/2016/11/bias-in-industry-funded-research-a-problem-of-funding-source-or-lack-of-openness-in-research.html
‘Delhi University Photocopy Shop Judgement: A Landmark in the Access to Knowledge Movement In India’, Livelaw (September 24, 2016), available at http://www.livelaw.in/delhi-university-photocopy-shop-judgement-landmark-access-knowledge-movement-india/.
‘Shouldn’t we liberate laws from the clutches of copyright law?’ SPICYIP (March 25, 2015), available at http://spicyip.com/2015/03/guest-post-shouldnt-we-liberate-laws-from-the-clutches-of-copyright-law.html.
Arul George Scaria, ‘What Makes an Edited Book of Published Articles an Invaluable Asset?’, Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 2014, Vol. 9(6), 531.
Arul George Scaria, ‘Schweik, Charles M. and Robert C. English (2012). Internet Success: A Study of Open-Source Software Commons. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press’, International Journal of the Commons (http://www.thecommonsjournal.org/index.php/ijc/issue/view/13).
‘Lufthansa Flies High with the Competition Commission of India Order’, GRUR Int. 2011, Issue 2, 197.
‘A New Discussion Paper on Compulsory Licensing’, GRUR Int. 2011, Issue 1, 90.
Arul George Scaria, ‘A Scholarly Attempt to Identify Privacy’, Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 2010, Vol. 5(1), 65.
‘Supreme Court Paves Way for a Smoother Functioning of the Competition Commission in India’, GRUR Int. 2010, Issue 11, 1014.
‘High Court of Delhi entscheidet zur Rolle von Patenten im arzneimittelrechtlichen Genehmigungsverfahren’, GRUR Int. 2009, Issue 10, 880.