Volume 14, Number 2 Article by Pavan Mamidi September, 2002
IPR: Experiences of Inventors :
Why is it that our young scientist-inventors, bursting with ideas, baulk at the thought of patenting them and choose instead the more ‘respectable’ option of publishing papers? How do they reconcile their basic instinct to freely disseminate knowledge with the ground realities of ‘blocking the domain’ and competition from peers? Despite the claim of the authorities that there were well documented and standardised processes, M T Arvind of Sasken Technologies, Nithin Nagaraj of GE, Prof Sanjay Biswas from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Prof Kannan Moudgalya, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, endorsed a general ignorance of IP issues and procedures among individual scientist-inventors and even those in cutting edge research and teaching institutions. Despite the awareness of the need to patent, documentation of ideas was usually considered a waste of time and energy. The patenting process was considered time consuming, expensive and tiresome, and mere fodder for IP lawyers. Once the inventor has been convinced of the originality of his idea, a new set of questions crops up. Has the idea already been patented? Should one patent the specific implementation of one’s algorithm or generalise one’s scheme and try to get a large number of claims? Will it have any business impact at all? How long will all this take? So much so, that one of the discussants was moved to remark that the core philosophy of IPR seemed to have missed the scientist-inventor of today!
Organisations such as IISc and IIT Bombay, who have some experience in patenting faced the problems of lack of infrastructure and support staff including lawyers, poor access to databases and no marketing tie-ups. The lack of IP cells, IPR related courses and a curriculum that promotes innovation was also felt.
Sanjay Biswas gave instances of the IISc experience of forming ‘co-operative ventures’ with MNCs, stressing how Indian institutions must learn to read the fine print before signing on the dotted line. Kannan Moudgalya briefly recounted the IIT Bombay experience in patenting. Amit Kejriwal narrated his story of the successful patenting of a unique concept within the purview of online networking.
Reprint No 02306 c
