Patent attorneys Dr Goutam Bhattacharyya and Anupam Trivedi, who have been associated with the firm for 10 years, and Dr Deepa Kachroo Tiku, who joined the firm one year ago, were elevated.

Bhattacharya graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 1999 and worked at the national metallurgical laboratory, the Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (CSIR) and the Shriram Institute for Industrial Research until December 2002 before joining K&S Partners.

Trivedi graduated with a BE from Government Engineering College Kota in 2000, and an MTech from IIT Delhi in 2002 and joined K&S Partners after which in 2009 he obtained an LLB from the Delhi University (DU).

Tiku qualified in biotechnology from the PU and the DU and worked with Dabur India and the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) until 2004 before joining Remfry & Sagar as a consultant until 2010. She was Director Programs and senior patent consultant at the Global Institute of Intellectual Property before joining K&S Partners in 2012.

Unpopular IP?

K&S founding and managing partner Jyoti Sagar, who continues as chairman at JSA after retiring earlier this year, commented: “The [K&S] model is the JSA model – we have the same kind of open structure for partnership, same stuff like no family [members being allowed to work at the firm at the same time] and so on.”

K&S Partners now has 14 partners – of whom six are equity partners – and 33 senior associates and 37 associates across Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore.

When asked about the relatively low leverage of the number of partners compared to associate, Sagar said that it was not possible to automate or commoditise large parts of IP advice, even the parts that were routine.

“Apart from patent litigation, even overseas, most large [corporate] firms don’t take any interest in IP. Day-to-day prosecution work works on a very different revenue model – the margins are very different, lower than standard corporate practice,” explained Sagar. “That’s the reason why when you look around the world, [most of] the IP practices are really boutique.”

Sagar added that while he was spending comparatively more time managing K&S than previously, he also continued working on JSA’s training, knowledge management and other “softer” issues, as well as “external ambassadorship” and strategy.