ISDLS - India

Under the leadership of Chief Justice Cyriac Joseph, ISDLS initiated a court-annexed mediation pilot project at the Bangalore City Civil Court (trial court). In the three months since the program’s inception, ISDLS experts have trained 55 lawyer-neutrals, all of whom have begun mediating cases at the Bangalore Mediation Center. They have successfully negotiated over 200 settlements in recovery, land-lord/tenant, specific performance, partition, and injunction suits. During this time, 16 U.S. legal experts (including federal judges, attorneys, mediation instructors, and court administrators) have worked in Bangalore to oversee the project.

In addition to the court program, ISDLS is working with the Bangalore business community to develop awareness about the use of private mediation and other forms of ADR to resolve complex IPR and other commercial matters. Through series of seminars, ISDLS introduced the concepts of mediation to leaders from a variety of industries (semi-conductor, software, and biotechnology), discussing the broader use of mediation in commercial, IPR, and other complex business-related disputes.

The following experts have worked in the Bangalore Mediation Project in the past four months:

1. Hon. Jeremy Fogel Judge, U.S. District Court, San Jose, California

2. Hon. Charles Breyer Judge, U.S. District Court, San Francisco, California

3. Hon. Celeste Bremer Chief Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court, Des Moines, Iowa

4. Hon. Richard Seeborg Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court, San Jose, California

5. Hon. Leo Papas Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court, San Diego, California

6. Stephen Mayo, Esq., Executive Director, ISDLS, San Francisco, California

7. Victor Schachter, Esq. Partner, Fenwick & West, LLP, San Francisco, California

8. Jeffrey Banchero, Esq., Founding Partner, Kastner Banchero LLP, San Francisco, California

9. Alan Berkowitz, Esq. Partner, Bingham McCutchen LLP, San Francisco, California

10. William Abrams, Esq. Partner, Bingham McCutchen LLP, Palo Alto, California

11. Neel Chatterjee, Esq. Partner, Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe LLP, San Francisco, California

12. Christopher Merriam, Esq. Assistant Deputy Chief for Intellectual Property, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

13. Jason Gull, Esq. Senior Counsel, Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

14. Niranjan Bhatt, Mediation Instructor, AMLEAD, Ahmedabad, India

15. Gregg Relyea, Esq. Mediator & Mediation Instructor, San Diego, California

16. Julie Bronson, ADR Administrator, Los Angeles Superior Court, Los Angeles, California

17. Teresa Carey, Esq. Mediation Instructor, Professional Mediation Associates, SF, California