Senior Partner
Nikhil Krishnamurthy
Senior Partner
Nikhil Krishnamurthy heads the Intellectual Property and Media & Entertainment divisions at K Law.
With over two decades of specialized practice, Nikhil has considerable experience in IP litigation, prosecution, licensing and enforcement matters. He has managed the IP enforcement campaigns of various luxury and pharmaceutical brands and software companies.
Nikhil has represented a wide array of clients in the Media & Entertainment and Information Technology industry, including music publishers, collecting societies, authors and composers, radio stations, film production houses, record labels, actors, performing artists, fashion designers, models, intermediaries, and internet market platforms.
He has been involved in several path-breaking litigation matters. These include the first compulsory license for music broadcast, cross-border satellite broadcast of music, infringement of a foreign composer’s copyrights, celebrity rights of publicity, defamation, John Doe enforcement and software end-user infringement.
Nikhil also has wide experience in complex Information Technology matters, including matters involving theft of trade secrets and confidential information, intermediary liability, take-down notices, domain names disputes, phishing, framing, linking and deployment of web-crawlers in breach of terms of use. He has negotiated several successful settlements in complex IP litigations in the course of several years of managing IP litigation matters.
Nikhil has been invited to speak at various Indian and international conferences, training seminars and workshops, including the MIDEM conference at Cannes, training programs for publishers at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and IP training programs for Judges and on copyright issues organized by the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD).
He has authored several articles on niche IP issues, including an India Chapter on Intellectual Property Licensing in India, Indian Copyright Amendments, Collective Licensing at the ISP level, mechanical reproduction rights, performing rights and artists’ resale share rights.
Awards and Recognition
Recognised for Patent Prosecution by IAM Patent1000 2023
Recognized in the Forbes India Legal Powerlist 2022 in the “Top 100 Individual Lawyers in the “Above 10 Years’ experience” category
‘Leading IP Lawyer’ by Chambers and Partners Asia-Pacific, 2023
Recognised as an outstanding IP practitioner in the World Intellectual Property Review Leaders 2022 Directory
Recognised as one of the Top 50 TMT Lawyers in Asia by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters), 2022
Recognised as one of the Top TMT / Fintech Lawyers in India by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters), 2021 & 2022
Recognized in the Forbes India Legal Powerlist 2021 in the “Top 100 Individual Lawyers in the “Above 10 Years’ experience” category
Recognised as one of the Super 50 Lawyers in India by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters), 2021
Recognised as one of India’s top lawyers and a member of India Business Law Journal’s prestigious A-List, 2021
Recognised by AsiaIP as one of the coveted IP Experts for India, 2022, 2021 & 2020
Recognised as one of the Top 15 IP Lawyers for India by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters), 2020
‘Band 4’ for Intellectual Property by Chambers and Partners Asia-Pacific, 2020
Regarded as one of the “top guys in the Bangalore market” for IP advice by Chambers and Partners Asia-Pacific, 2019
‘Market – Leading Lawyer’ for Intellectual Property, IT, Telco & Media by Asia law Leading Lawyers, 2016
‘Leading IP Lawyer’ by Chambers and Partners Asia-Pacific, 2016
Included in the ‘40 Under 45 Leading Lawyers in India’ by Indian Lawyer 250, 2016