Office Of Profit

I ignore any news heading that has the word 'office'
these days. I am sure, like me, most other people are fed up with the 'Office
of Profit' business. But I expected editors of my country's business
newspapers not to have missed this news piece. While I accidentally came across
this very tiny box item, I believe it could have been a front page news for that
day.

The news was about Kamal Nath, our Union Minister for
Commerce and Industry inaugurating an IPR office in Mumbai. I was amazed to
learn that there are only four offices in India that handle IPR for a country,
which has a few million people working on cutting edge applications and R&D
in the areas of IT, communications, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and so on.
While most of them are doing work for foreign companies, there are quite a lot
of them working for Indian organizations, or are entrepreneurs.

India is expected to produce IT products and services worth
$34 bn for domestic as well as the exports market. I need not tell anyone that
most of the IT work is intellectual in nature. And here, we have just four IPR
offices, and that too badly equipped, to serve one the fastest growing
industries. As more and more software licensing will happen, companies with a
strong patent and copyright position will gain.

In the year 2004-05, while much smaller companies in India
such as Texas Instruments filed for 450 patents, ST Micro for 171, Intel for
135, and Cisco for 120 patents, Indian companies such as TCS and Ramco filed for
16 patents each.

Let me share an experience with you. During our annual DQ
Top20 survey of IPR status in the country, most Indian companies turn out to be
not geared for giving us information on how many patents they've filed for,
and how many they have actually been granted. In fact many companies are not
even aware of the process of filing for a patent. They have no idea who to
approach and where to go. While the world has now accepted India as a creative
giant in the software arena, this country does not have a clue as to how many
patents have been filed.

While there are a few Indian private agencies that take up
patent-filing jobs, they are yet to deliver the desired performance.
American patent-filing companies are just too expensive. This is one area
that our government needs to take on, and on a war footing. We cannot have four
offices in a few cities, when significant software development work is happening
in over 25 locations in the country. The government has to ensure that a culture
of IPR is encouraged among Indian companies. Some of the basic things needed is
a good office with people who understand and are well versed in IPR issues, and
a good IT infrastructure. Obviously, enough awareness programs have to be
initiated so that people know what IPR is, what are its benefits, and how to get
it done.

Some of us might not be in favour of getting the government
into this, but I strongly believe that IPR is as strategic for the country as
nuclear energy. India will have a very strong position in the global economy, if
it can leverage its IPR potential. The Government should not wait for someone to
come and work on it. IPR offices will be the 'Offices of Profit' for the
country.

An interesting observation was the absence of our Union
minister for IT, Dayanidhi Maran, whose sector is likely to be the biggest
beneficiary of this office. I personally feel that Maran and his department
should be the main driver for opening more modernized IPR offices.