AHMEDABAD: Around six lakh students
graduate from technical institutes every year in our country and none of their
'innovative' project works is
considered worthy of a patent. There exists no
arrangement in our education system to recognise these efforts.
In fact,
the much-touted 'black box' being installed in cars in US and UK, mainly for
insurance companies to assess genuine car accident claims, also found mention as
project work by a group of students from Latur-based Women Polytechnic Institute
in Maharashtra.
"Did these Latur students not deserve recognition for
their idea? This project was not considered worthy enough for an auto show
here," said Anil Gupta, IIM-A professor and founder of National Innovation
Foundation (NIF) and Sristi.
Along with Gupta, 12 other experts
gathered at the annual intellectual property rights (IPR) workshop at Ahmedabad
Management Association (AMA) and deliberated on various issues that affect
patenting in our country.
Patent attorney of Klarquist Sparkman,
Gregory Maurer, said that patent examiner offices in our country should be armed
with large research databases to protect rights of individual inventors. "This
is important as people may steal processes or technologies from public domain in
one area and then apply for patents in another country."
Technical
member of intellectual property appellate board (IPAB) S Chandrashekhar, added,
"We have managed to upload almost two lakh innovations on our website for access
for the public. Today one of our prime concerns is the process of 'evergreening'
where major pharmaceutical companies by making minor changes in their present
products apply for patents."
However, Gupta believed that a major
shift in mindset would be required to bring about the change. "Imagine in terms
of castor seeds or physillium seeds, which has thousands of uses in traditional
medicines, drug industry and herbal market, India has just two patents in
physillium while the US has 328 and in comparison to five patents in castor
seeds with India, there are 399 patents with individuals and other countries. Is
this not shameful?"
Speaking of innovations, Gupta said the poor may
be at the bottom of the economic pyramid but are top of the "innovation"
pyramid. "The grass-root innovations are frugal in technology, hence they are
affordable, energy efficient and accessible — where else can you find this
talent pool. In fact, UGC and AICTE should ban educational institutions those
borrow agricultural innovations of poor farmers and label them as their
innovations."
Ahmedabad
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