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.