Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Bullpen to pitch – play-road for Indian IT / ITeS Industry

In a cross-perspective initiative, legal practitioners upholding facets of law relating to the field of Information Technology (IT) participated in a conference titled “The Indian IT / ITeS Industry Legal and Regulatory Challenges in the Decade Ahead” in Chennai on 02nd May, 2010 to discuss their viewpoints. Each of the legal practitioners, being a distinguished luminary, contributed to an outlook, which they believed to be the road ahead, and thus sought to achieve a paradigm conglomerated shift in outlook for the journey ahead; for every Indian IT firm in correspondence with their legal and regulatory challenges in respect of a unilateral world so as to achieve work compliancy on a global platform, seamlessly. In brief below, are the synopses of each of the speakers with their viewpoints:

Mr. Seturaman Mahalingam, CFO and Executive Director of Tata Consultancy Services welcomed the audience and speakers.

Honourable Mrs. Justice Ruma Pal spoke, at length, about the use of a practical machinery for dispute resolution – ‘arbitrations’. Acting in accordance with The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, she mentioned the plus points and negative points of the practical aspects of the arbitration options in India, and its contemporary criticisms. Her paper is as below:
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Legal laureate Zia Mody who has raised her firm, AZB & Partners’ stature to the highest levels of national and international acclaim, presented her viewpoints on ‘Evolving Legal and Regulatory regime in India – Impact of IT / ITeS Industry’.

Baker & McKenczie’s Mr. Michael S. Mensik dug out issues in relation to legal constraints on cross-border flows of technology and their impact on India. His understanding and explanation of the various flows of information exchange in an organization brought to light the question of risk management within an enterprise in today’s world of global operations in which a single firm deals with information flow across various nations governed by various legal frameworks. Jeopardy arising out of ignoring the issues of compliance is a complete death-trap for an organization. It is hence necessary to identify areas of compliance risks and to plug those areas with effective solutions. His presentation on ‘Constraints on global flows of encryption & Other technologies and their impact on India’ follows:
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A partner of Kelley Drye’s New York office, Mr. Talat Ansari, led the audience into the constructs relating to recognizing and enforcing international arbitration awards. His presentation included questions relating to issues wherein, a party in dispute arising from an international contract has won an arbitration award and the losing party refuses to honour the award. He highlighted the use of provisions under the Geneva convention, the N. Y. convention and its enforceable grounds and measures. Details regarding ‘Alternate Dispute Resolution in Outsourcing Contract’ follow:
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Recognised in Chambers USA as one of “America’s Leading Lawyers” in the area IT and IT Outsourcing, Mr. Shaalu Mehra, Partner in the Silicon Valley of Perkinc Coie, provided his comprehensive thoughts on ‘Open Source Materials – Challenges Ahead’. He discussed General Public License and their evolutionary versions.

From England, Mr. Mark Lewis (partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP) leads the Outsourcing practice at his firm. He is versed with working parameters in relation to legal issues for IT and outsourcing companies. His book provides manuals on outsourcing. The major case in point of his presentation was a case study, BSkyB v EDS, which although was not a landmark decision had magnanimous proportions in terms of the fraud committed and damages paid. This case study brings to light the liabilities of misstatements in the business garnering process, its compounding problems, lies, deceits, and its (non-surprising) tumultuous repercussions. The case, in detail, ‘BSkyB v EDS: What it means for IT and ITeS providers doing business in the UK?’ is as follows:
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Departing from legal issues, compliance issues, issues relating to fraud, and issues relating to arbitration, the conference proceeded towards learning the intricacies of what matters most, the money issues. Fund management issues, especially the (oft misconstrued) Income Tax issues were defined in this presentation by Mr. Pradeep Narayanan, Senior Manager with Ernst & Young. Keypoints, as presented by him on ‘Tax issues relating to IT / ITeS Sector’ are as follows:
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Dr. Mohan Dewan, proprietor of R. K. Dewan & Co., who has single handedly nurtured his firm to become a one-window Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) workshop where all matters from filing to fighting are prosecuted zestfully, submitted his paper on issues relating to patents in the IT industry. He steered his presentation at the conference to enlighten the audience of how strong and needful the pillars of IPR are, for not only the growth of any organization but also for any organization to mark their territory. Explaining the growth of Microsoft where Mr. Bill Gates held onto his own against IBM, during the former’s inception days, by holding on to the copyrights of his BASIC interpreter (language) to understanding the need for IPR in today’s 4th wave (of patterns that shape businesses, economies, politics, religions, global affairs and social power interrelationships), he tickled the brains of the audience to arouse their curiosity of the options under the gamut of IPR and their concurrence with their respective works. His paper on ‘Intellectual Property Rights in the IT Sector: A bane or a boon?’ is as follows:
Software Patent

Mr. Arvind Datar, Senior Advocate, practicing at the Madras High Court, Chennai, submitted his worth of thoughts on the need for institutional arbitration. This ‘Advantages of Institutional Arbitration’ reads as follows:
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From the European continent, Dr. Alexander Duisberg, Partner with Bird and Bird at their Munich Office, threw light on data protection and data security in accordance with recent developments in the EU. It is common knowledge, that with India and China developing as hot shot destinations for BPO, KPO, LPO and IT industries, especially serving the main offices located West, the idea of sharing data is a must. Ensuring that such transferred data is safe is a nightmare, not only for the firm but the countries hosting the physical office, at large too. Hence, Dr. Alexander presented the following presentation:
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and shared the following paper:
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A panel discussion, at the end of the seminar, was set up for discussing the ‘Future of IT / ITes Industry in India’. Speaker Gopalkrishna Hegde, Legal Adviser – RBI, briefly informed about ‘RBI Guidelines on Outsourcing’. Speaker Samuel Mani K., Head of Legal, Infosys spoke in relation to ‘Challenges of Disengagement’. He explained the arduous process of understanding the legal definition of ‘compliance’ in as many countries as the parent company wishes to expand their operations. Case in point was Infosys which operates out of 38 countries, and hence needed to understand compliance issues for every single country of their own accord. Speaker Satya Hegde, SVP & General Counsel – TCS further elaborated on ‘Corporate Compliance’ from TCS’ point of view.

The event concluded by providing fodder for thought in respect of understanding the legal factors to be considered for achieving a seamless IT / ITeS global industry, and the role that India needs to play in respect of Indian IT / ITeS companies to achieve this, hindrance-free.

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