This book is the culmination of my doctoral research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. I am deeply indebted to my doctoral supervisor Prof Dr Thomas Cottier, my guru, for his academic guidance and continuous moral support, without which I would have never reached the closure of my research. I thank him from the bottom of my heart for being a pillar of support right from conceptualising the research and going through challenging periods until the end. Thanks for all the discussions on the topic and especially when I was preparing the foundation of my arguments. His encouragement to think more deeply on the subject from different perspectives and not narrowly on trips, has opened my thought process and changed my outlook.
I would like to thank the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law (mpi) in Munich for their support to undertake the initial research. Special thanks to Dr Christopher Heath, for all the enriched discussions while at the Institute (now with the Board of Appeals, European Patent Office). Thanks to Professors Dr. Joseph Straus, Dr. Ansgar Ohly, Dr Reto Hilty and Dr Josef Drexel for their guidance and also thanks to, Ms. Elfride Stangl at the mpi administration office for her kind help and assistance. Thanks also to the National Law University, New Delhi (nlud) for allowing me to use their library facilities. My friends, Prof. Yogesh Pai at nlu, Delhi and Prof. Arul George Scaria, now with nlsu, Bangalore for all the discussions and debates about my research.
I dedicate this book to my parents, wife, sister, aunt and maternal cousin for their constant support and inspiration and my young son for coping with shortened play time. I wish my father who had been a constant inspiration was there with us today to share my joy. I am thankful to each one of them for helping me balance family responsibilities, professional work and the doctoral research that emanated in this book. Thanks to all my friends who had helped me always with their positivity and support.
Santanu Mukherjee