[Lokesh Vyas and Swaraj Paul Barooah] Intellectual Property Rights – a fascinating ‘subject’ that inadvertently touches upon so many aspects of our day to day life, whether we’re conscious of it or not. A few decades ago, even most lawyers wouldn’t have been able to clearly explain what a patent is. Fast forward to today, and while there’s still plenty of misunderstanding – patents, copyrights, trademarks, inventions, innovations, 4th industrial revolution, etc have all become buzzwords! Simultaneously, the ever growing division between “pro-IP” and “anti-IP” people have polarised views to such a large extent that it has become increasingly difficult to question another’s position, without being forced into a camp – a theme Shamnad touched upon frequently. Is there space for a genuine discussion around the whats, whys, whens and hows underlying the IP system? For asking questions such as – why does “pro-IP” often get translated to ‘easy grant of patents’ instead of ‘a better IP system’? Is IP a rule or an exception, in a free-market society? What implications do the colonial origins of the IP regime have in a post-colonial world, if any? What type of incentives do people look for, and what trade-offs can we make to give those incentives? What role does IP play in the larger ‘knowledge economy’? And for that matter – where does one even ask these questions? Legal academia desires formal strait-jacketed, peer-reviewed answers, not open-questions, with variable perspective-based answers (especially if they in turn give rise to further questions!). And classrooms often do not have time or mind-space to allow for wandering discussions, when they have a time-bound syllabus to teach.