Justice Prabha Sridevan
IDIA has always championed creativity in all of its myriad forms. In fact, the acronym for our training programme “CHAMPS” starts with “C” for Creativity—a value we seek to instill in all our scholars.
We’re very fortunate in having some of the most creative minds serve on our advisory board. Two of them just helped us raise money in a rather creative way.
Justice Prabha Sridevan, a celebrated former judge and a champion of equality and human rights, has been a long-standing IDIA supporter. But her talents are not limited to the law alone. She is also a great artist! For more on her, see this interview.
For an IDIA fund raising event, she agreed to contribute two of her sketches. These sketches titled “Access to Justice” fetched a fair price (Rs 75,000) at an auction during the IDEX Legal Awards 2017, an amount that was then sent to IDIA.
Mr Pravin Anand
And next, we had an even more creative fund raising idea from Mr. Pravin Anand, widely revered as the country’s leading IP lawyer, and managing Partner of “Anand and Anand”.
Easily one of the most creative legal professionals in India, Mr Anand not only helps clients on the legal side, but also helps them come up with smart and savvy brand names. He once advised that the mark METRO be flipped around. And thus was born the mark “ORTEM”, famously applied on many household appliances several decades ago.
He decided to leverage this talent for coining creative brands by registering them with the Indian trademark office. He then proposed that companies desirous of having strong brands pick from his repertoire. All they needed to do was pay a fair sum for the assignment. Given that trademark registration is a long-drawn process and companies often need them at a short notice, this creative idea worked.
At our IDIA annual conference last year, Mr Anand proposed that the proceeds of these trademark assignments be transferred to IDIA to help fund the legal education of our underprivileged scholars. With the first assignment of one of Mr Anand’s brands to a client, IDIA received a wonderful contribution of INR 5,11,000; enough to support two years at law school for one of our scholars.
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Written by Swati Agrawal, Director, IDIA.