Pursuit (Completed)

Five - Part A

Deepshika scrolled through the 40-odd pages of the patent agreement. In the adjacent window was the same document, a copy of it. One was part of the license agreement between Batra Pharmaceuticals and Agnihotri Manufacturing. The other was a photocopied version of the original patent registration jointly held by Batra Pharmaceuticals and a U.S. based company, Alpha. Alpha was suing AMC for not paying the patent licensing fee and manufacturing the drugs illegally. AMC was arguing that their agreement was with Batra Pharmaceuticals, not Alpha.

The other seven followed the same pattern with different names for the U.S. counterpart. Probably, the pattern made Aakriti give her all eight cases as a chunk. Finding the pattern was easy. Finding out why there was a pattern was difficult. Finding out how to solve them out of courts was a step further. That was exactly the reason she was hired. She specialised in not just patent infringement, but also in mediating out of court settlements.

Deepshika started her career as a trainee in the Patent Claims office at IP Australia, an agency of Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. After the 2-year short stint, she moved to a legal consultancy in Sydney where she was assigned full time on Intellectual Property cases in the software industry. Since the cases involved confidential information, mediation was the best way to settle the claims. It was often the case that both parties outsourced business processes to the same service provider leading to conflict of interest and patent infringement. She had to visit the service provider in India to review first hand for the possibility of patent infringement. With more than 3 years of handling experience, she had become well versed with the Indian patent laws which gave her the confidence to accept Aakriti's offer.

Deepshika pushed her chair back and moved to the whiteboard in the small meeting room which was her make-shift office. She wrote BatraP and AMC, and then she wrote Alpha below them. She connected BatraP and Alpha since there was an agreement. Similarly, she connected BatraP and AMC. For a jointly owned patent, one holder cannot license out the rights. BatraP did that. She checked the document once again for even a mention of Alpha in the licensing agreement. There was no match found, even in her manual scrolling.

Next step was the dates. The agreement was dated 08 July 1993. AMC was registered as a company only on 27 June 1993. Within 11 days, AMC managed to get the license to manufacture the patented drugs. Red herrings sounded for Deepshika. She kept the registration papers side by side with the agreement on the glass table, picked up the yellow highlighter and dragged them on the dates. She repeated her action once again, twice, thrice and a time more. How could a newly registered company receive the license in 11 days?

Deepshika went one more time on the dates, but this time, her eyes focused on the signatories. Mr. Ravinder Batra signed for BatraP while Mr. Ankush Agnihotri signed for AMC. In the patent ownership documents, the name was Ravinder Batra as well. There was no mention of Ravinder Batra and the current status of BatraP. She called Aakriti but was greeted with a switched off message.

The key party if the case, rather cases, was Batra Pharmaceuticals. She hit her fist against the white board. It should have been her starting point to ask for where this co-owner was in the current timeline. She asked for AMC and Alpha's company registration but forgot about BatraP. She had to wait for Aakriti to provide her the documents. Before that, she needed to calm down. She closed her eyes, leaned back in the chair and went to her thinking board where her plan was sketched. She could share this new information with Ayaan, Aakriti or her Mom. Who would be the best choice?

---

Ayaan paced in the lift lobby. His phone battery was dead so he left it at the office. He took a taxi instead of his car. All in the attempt to find out which of his belongings held the GPS tracker. Raghav was helping him by reporting whether his Mom knew where he had been.