Judicial decision-making key to regulating property rights: Experts

Judicial decision-making is the key to regulating property rights, predictability, economic growth and competition, which will facilitate innovation and competition, legal experts at a conference here said.

"Every IP licensing arrangement or patent litigation process requires direct interaction with government officials. However, emphasis should be put to differentiate political environment and judiciary," said F. Scott Kieff, Commissioner, United States International Trade Commission (USITC).

He further said the judicial decision-making is the key to regulate property rights, predictability, economic growth and competition and a predictable and flexible system is required to facilitate innovation and competition.

He was speaking at a conference on innovation, competition and intellectual property rights (IPR) issues pertaining to the information, communication and technology (ICT) sector organised by Jindal Initiative on Research in IP and Competition (JIRICO).

JIRICO is an initiative of O.P. Jindal Global University.

The two-day forum, organised over the weekend, witnessed participation of over 50 speakers from 10 government agencies, 16 universities and 15 leading corporations and law firms.

Raj Kumar, Vice-Chancellor, O.P. Jindal Global University, said hosting the global forum was part of the larger effort of the university to engage in policy-making, by bringing together a diverse set of policy practitioners and stakeholders, under one single platform.

"If you don't get protection, you will not have the incentive to innovate. The patent system in our country provides a limited monopoly of 20 years. But to transform the IPR regime of India, a lot more needs to be done, and DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotio looks forward to the expert opinions and key recommendations from this conference in this regard," said Rajiv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, DIPP, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

"Modern corporations have understood that technology is a value-enabler for competition in the modern day business. Development and innovation in the aerospace and defence, should be shared in the open domain. This is what Boeing does as a market leader and research and development will significantly benefit from this," said Akhil Prasad, Country Counsel India, Boeing International Corporation.

--IANS

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