Friday, October 10, 2014

Why should Indians invest in IPR?

The creation of new goods and services with changing times is the key to economic activity and the blindingly rapid speed in which technology is advancing, a country needs to have innovation as its main priority. India is such a country; being at the brink of its development, technological know-how is a must in order to achieve success.

India is the fastest growing economy in the world today. The spirit of innovation has been running wild especially after the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” policy was introduced; wherein he strived to create an environment which encouraged Indian companies to create, research and manufacture their products and innovations within India. In order to align with the prime minister’s goals, secure IPR protections have to be consistently enforced.

What are the main arguments against IPR which leads to mistaken assumptions about it?
Exaggerating the costs for acquiring and maintaining IPR and the risks that come along with. This is completely untrue; IPR is very much cheap and easy to acquire.

Assuming that the Government policies are constricted and inert regarding IPR (which they are not). It is all for the benefit of the person who holds the rights to his intellectual property.

IPR is anti-competitive; rather it is a combination of transparency and certainty which incites competition.

IPR imposes unwarranted encumbrances and unfairly extorts value from developing countries. In order to protect one’s intellectual property, may it be a patent or a copyright, some responsibilities such as renewing your patent, licensing, etc. is not an unfair burden.
Such arguments have been made in the past to discourage potential innovators, but it is successfully used as a ploy to gain leverage in trade negotiations too which just goes to show that it isn’t a serious critique. Innovation is a large and complex process and intellectual property is just one factor of it; an important one.

President Pranab Mukherji had said, “Innovation is increasingly recognized as the currency of the future. India’s innovation bottom line is not very encouraging as the number of patent applications filed in countries like US and China is roughly 12 times more than that of India. We should step up our expenditure on research to pursue innovation in a big way. The private sector should also increase their share of spendings to levels prevalent in countries such as Japan, US and South Korea.”

India stands to benefit the most by having more dynamic and robust IP laws. There is a great demand not only among Indian innovators, but also foreign investors who are eager and excited by Modi’s vision to foster a knowledge-based economy conforming to global standards. This is because the extent to which a country protects its Intellectual Property Rights determines how well they perform in the new economic environment.

The international system is moving towards markedly stronger IPRs and when viewed from the context of economic globalization, a country like India is on its way to significantly strengthening its IPR regime as we approach the next generation of technology and innovation.

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