Pai's Comments on India Discussion Paper on SEPs/FRAND

In April I published a post that linked to the India Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and Their Availability on FRAND Terms (available here), and to comments on the paper submitted by Wong-Ervin, Ginsburg, Kobayashi & Wright.  I followed up with a subsequent post linking to other comments that had been submitted to the DIPP (see here).  Professor Yogesh Pai also submitted comments and has posted them on ssrn under the title Comments on the DIPP Discussion Paper on Standard-Essential Patents and Their Availability on FRAND Terms.  Here is a link to Professor Pai's comments, and here is the abstract:

This note is submitted to the DIPP as comments on the DIPP "Discussion Paper on Standard-Essential Patents and their Availability on FRAND terms". It discusses the legal position and policy dynamics involving Standard Essential Patents. The comments highlight that caution must be exercised and more empirical based studies must be relied on before assuming that there are immediate policy changes that need to be made. It is submitted that the DIPP must exercise caution in making strong policy interventions in the very dynamic context of innovation and technical change. It is submitted that policy makers ought to defer to the prevailing statutory framework, regulatory and judicial scrutiny before making irreversible policy changes. It is the opinion of the author that such a deference thesis will help the Government of India to make the right policy changes, wherever needed, and yet save it from making incorrect policy decisions.

In addition to elaborating on the above thesis, Professor Pai states, among other things, that in India there is at present "no significant precedent to calculation of reasonable royalties except in case of compulsory licenses" (p.8), and that India does not recognize the doctrine of contracts for the benefit of third parties (p.6 n.20).  

If readers are aware of any other comments submitted to DIPP that I haven't mentioned, please send them along.  For a previous post on two of Professor Pai's other papers on FRAND, see here.