 "Intellectual property image via Shutterstock.")
Industry bodies have welcomed the government’s recently announced National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy. According to FICCI, the Policy correctly identifies IP as a strategic tool for furthering India’s economic goals and therefore recommends for the effective protection of IP rights as an essential element for making optimal use of innovative and creative capabilities of its people.
“The national policy contains many encouraging recommendations including the need to create awareness on the importance of IPRs through a nation-wide promotional campaign and linking it to other national initiatives like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’, undertaking a baseline survey across sectors to evaluate the IP potential in specific sectors,” said Harshavardhan Neotia, president, FICCI.
According to the government, the National IPR Policy, which received the Cabinet nod on May 13, 2016, will lay the future roadmap for intellectual property in India.
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“The National IPR Policy is a vision document that aims to create and exploit synergies between all forms of intellectual property (IP), concerned statutes and agencies. It sets in place an institutional mechanism for implementation, monitoring and review. It aims to incorporate and adapt global best practices to the Indian scenario. This policy will weave in the strengths of the government, research and development organisations, educational institutions, corporate entities including MSMEs, start-ups and other stakeholders in the creation of an innovation-conducive environment, which stimulates creativity and innovation across sectors, as also facilitates a stable, transparent and service-oriented IPR administration in the country,” said the government press release.
NASSCOM has applauded the new IPR policy for encompassing the entire value chain spanning across IPR awareness, generation, legislative framework, administration, commercialisation, enforcement and adjudication, human capital, comprehensively covering all aspects of the domain.
The policy has reformed the current administration by making Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) the nodal point coordinate and guide future development of IPRs in India while responsibility for actual implementation of the plans of action will remain with the ministries/departments concerned in their assigned sphere of work. This single umbrella approach will help leverage linkages between various IP offices. The proposed Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) to be constituted under the aegis of DIPP, would be an important connection with the inventors and innovators.
“Other significant policy announcements include making the DIPP as the nodal department for all IPR related developments in India, the emphasis to make the Indian Patent Office an increasingly service oriented organisation and to improve IP enforcement and the adjudication mechanism, among others,” added Neotia of FICCI.
Companies face a lot of difficulties in monetising intangibles like IPR. “The policy has captured the concerns suitably and their proposal to create a ‘simple loan guarantee scheme to encourage start-ups’ based on IPRs as mortgage-able assets; financial support and securitization of IP rights for commercialisation by enabling valuation of IP rights as intangible assets through of appropriate methodologies and guidelines, and enabling legislative, administrative and market framework are in the right direction. Further, specific references to promoting use of OSS, as well as support for IPR generation for ICT technologies, including those relating to cyber security for India are welcome,” said NASSCOM in a statement.
