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IP core for India to become a 'knowledge economy'

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CIOL Bureau
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 New Delhi: World IP Day has just got over with many companies, especially in India, driving the need for respecting and encouraging IP-generation from this country, which has now created a niche for software services, but has failed to generate or monetize on the IP created from here. However, India is fast emerging as an IP-nation, and will be driven by domestic demand for products and services, feel experts.

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Economics reiterates the fact that developed nations have always banked on how much they get paid for the IP the country holds, rather than for the IP they pay for. Going back to history, this has been the phenomenon right from the era of industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. A lot of individuals and firms innovated and created IP in the manufacturing sector and the result is now that these countries are ‘developed.’

One of the few countries, such as India had by-passed the manufacturing era, and had leaped into the services economy, straight from the agricultural economy. This is seen as a major reason why IP is not a big thrust area in this country, which is poised to become a ‘knowledge economy.’

The ‘knowledge economy’ is being fuelled by emerging sectors, such as the Information Technology (IT), telecommunications, biotech and pharma, media and entertainment. And for India to be a success in all these areas, it is essential for us to develop our own IP and monetize on that.

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One might have to keep in mind that it is not that Indian firms, especially in the IT sector, do not create IP. They do, but only a few Indian IT product companies exist. Another major issue of concern is that these few companies also fail to monetize on the IP they hold.

According to Rakesh Bakshi, legal and corporate attorney at Microsoft India, IP will be the centrality and core for knowledge economy. “India is emerging as an IP-nation, given the fact that there is an increase in the level of awareness about Intellectual property. This is evident by the fact that 15-20 per cent of the cases filed in the high courts relate to IP in one form or the other,” he said.

Stressing on the need for specialised courts for trying IP cases, Bakshi said that there was a huge demand for IP-attorneys in the country. “There are about 140 lawyers who are registered practitioners for IP-related cases, in a huge country like this and it is not known how many of them are really practicing,” he said.

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“To increase the number of legal professionals specialising in IP, Microsoft has initiated an academic scholarship program for three students in about ten law universities in the country. This program to encourage law students to take IP as a profession,” Bakshi informed.

While more people taking to IP as a legal profession is only one part of the story, the other part is the number of patents filed in the country.

According to Sanjay Gupta, chairperson for the India committee of Business Software Alliance, reward and recognition are the two time tested measures to foster creativity. At the basic level monetary reward can encourage almost anyone whilst at the higher-level recognition constitutes a better incentive to encourage people. In today's world new and innovative ideas flow not only out of the lab but also from the strokes coming from a pen (authors) or a brush (artists) or a keyboard (both music and computer).

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“Research and development is rewarded by Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) particularly patents. Patents are in ordinary language the reward for developing something new which is useful for many and provides to the developer a period of exclusivity of use, which if he or she decides to share (license) to others, enable him to make money. This rightful money inflow helps the IPR owner to recover the huge R&D spend and earn enough to make a living as well as to invest in their next research project. Most scientists seek fame too – they compete to submit papers and get awards, even coveted one like the Nobel Prize,” he said.

Stressing on the need for India to focus on obtaining more and more patents, Gupta said the number of patents filed till date was too low as compared to the World Average.

“The resident patent filing per million populations in India is only seven as compared to 21 in Brazil and 51 in China – the world average is 148. Similarly, according to the country of origin PCT applications filed India has only 677 as against 2501 in China,” he said quoting the WIPO Patent Report for 2006.

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Gupta also pointed out the CSIR report for 2004-05, which states while 3018 papers were published only 140 patents were granted to it from the US patent office.

“The critical development of every country lies in respecting IPR. The biggest form of flattery, to give to the bright minds of our society, is by paying for every use of their IPR. All forms of theft viz. piracy, counterfeits and infringement of other peoples IPR should be discouraged and denounced, and even punished severely,” he felt.

Shankar Narayanan, former co-founder of eMuzed, and now the founder of Location-Intelligence product and solution company – Spime Inc., is passionate about IP generation from India.

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"India is slowly moving towards software IP and product building nation while holding on and improving its strength of software services power house, which is a good sign. I am proud and happy to boast as one of the early (2000-2001) adaptors of starting IP & Product centric start up focused on cell phone space, which effectively deployed IP and products through world's biggest brand names and successfully exited through acquisition,” he opined.

Nasscom chairman, Kiran Karnik too feels that the time for India to move from service-oriented country to that of generating IP has come. “It is true that we don’t generate too many IP’s, however, I know a lot of people working with major companies quitting and getting into R&D,” he said.

Stating that generating IP is capital-intensive as well as time consuming, Karnik said Indian companies would succeed when there is a local demand for the product or service. “There should be domestic demand, and the more it increases, then the Indian companies generating IP can monetize on that,” he added.

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