Patent Circle Will Stop Blogging

Coincidently three years back Dennis Crouch, a US patent attorney and author of leading patent law blog Patently-O suggested me to start a patent law blog to keep posting my views and articles rather than sending them to other bloggers to publish and from there came the idea of

Recently, SpicyIP in their recent post referred about recent pre-grant oppositions decided by the Indian Patent Office which is incidentally reported by our blog only. We wrote a friendly comment to Shamnad’s post about the fact that these decisions are exclusively reported by our blog and we would surely appreciate if his post can acknowledge our blog. In fact, we too have made same mistake in past when we accidentally and unknowingly used a phrase coined by SpicyIP without acknowledging them, for which we later apologized to Shamnad. In reply to our comment to Shamnad’s post, an Anonymous reader made (what we feel) a derogatory remark against me which we are reproducing below.

“VC,

For your information, these decisions are first available on the Indian patent office..... From where u take and put your water mark to claim its yours....

Don't become so selfish and mean. It's already there in the public domain and how can you claim that its only available in your blog???”

We made a counter reply to above comment which we are reproducing below.

“Anonymous,

No idea who you are but sole purpose of putting watermark is to distinguish the source if someone download the decision from our blog and obviously not to claim ownership. If you have any problem with that then who is asking you to refer and download from our blog (feel free to surf around patent office website). Indeed decisions are available on official website of patent office but why it was still not reported anywhere in media or news even after 15 days of decision made available on official website. Simple nobody knows about the decision even the companies involved in opposition proceedings. In fact, it was our blog that keep monitoring and retrieving such decisions to bring them in notice of our readers. There are more than 15 decisions listed in February and March 2009 but we decided only to cite five of them and incidentally SpicyIP referred those decisions only (except Pegasys) and sufficient to understand that author has referred those decisions from our blog only. Is it wrong to ask author to acknowledge our blog for such info? Yes if you do not feel respecting and acknowledging someone time and effort for bringing such valuable information in public then we have no point of discussion here.”

We do not know how to react to such comments but this is for first time we are showing our displeasure to such activities. In fact, we are very disturb knowing that such comment is not moderated by Shamnad and made public despite having personal remarks against us. In our counter reply we also wrote to Shamnad which we are reproducing below.

“@Shamnad,

We always have great respect for you, both personally and professionally, and your contribution to IP awareness. As you referred in past that you moderate comments made to your blog. We sincerely expect such professionalism at least from you that any comment making personal remarks specific to someone using words like “selfish” and “mean” should be avoided from being posted in public.”

This episode has finally brought us to an understanding that our time, expertise and resources are not appreciated by readers and anyone can anytime disrespect our contribution and hard work. We sincerely feel it is our duty now that we should take reasonable measures to hold our respect and dignity by stopping blogging anymore in future. Readers do have right to criticize our posts/views but they have no right to make personal remarks against us. We appreciate your support and contribution in bringing success to

Patent Circle

and hope you too enjoyed the journey as do we. Thank you.

Patent Circle

. Thanks Dennis!!! And from there on it was a great journey, never thought my views and articles would be widely read by hundreds of readers working in corporate R&D, law firms, news media and universities across the globe. Not only

Patent Circle

became regularly read patent law blog from India but also brought us a decent recognization in patent domain. We started writing posts to create patent awareness and understanding, and to keep our readers updated with latest developments across the globe, particularly India. Obviously we enjoyed doing that and sharing our knowledge without any selfish interest. Over past few months we focused more on Indian patent landscape such as parallel importation, pre-grant and post-grant oppositions, compulsory licensing, patent-drug regulatory linkage, and so on, however, some our posts brought us some criticism which is well understandable. We always encourage constructive debate and positive criticism from our readers but unfortunately some readers rather criticizing our post made personal remarks against us. Some Anonymous readers commented us for showing bias attitude in our writing which is still acceptable as everyone has his/her own way of judging our posts. But there are few readers who made personal remarks against our integrity and questioned our motive behind writing posts. If fact one of the reader (Ajay Chauhan) went ahead to write full-fledged post on his blog against me (which he later deleted) --- accusing me to be manipulative in our posts. He even earlier bluntly pointed fingers on my integrity making comment that our posts are tailored to lure foreign law firms. In other instance, one of his co-author Jeena raised finger on our credibility in writing posts by questioning our motive. Obviously such comments are not tolerable and completely unprofessional. However, we still maintain patience despite such absurd comments because comments made by any Tom, Dick and Harry cannot question the hard work and integrity of our blog.