NCERT/CBSE Books to include Chapter on Intellectual Property Rights

With a view to spread awareness about the patent system and its benefits, the government is going to incorporate a chapter on intellectual property rights (IPR) in school curriculum, Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, Mr Chaitanya Prasad said at an ASSOCHAM higher education conference held in New Delhi last week.

“We are trying to incorporate an IPR chapter in school curriculum, we have already developed that chapter and we are in talks with the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) and the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education),” said Mr Prasad in his inaugural address at a national conference on ‘RUSA (Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan)-Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education Institutions’ organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

“An IPR chapter can also be included in a number of courses, fields and streams in the universities as well as the number of licences and assignments of patents in universities getting recorded in India is negligible,” said Mr Prasad.

“India is lagging behind in taking benefits of the patent system unlike the other developing and developed countries of the world mainly due to poor awareness of patents and their advantages to get huge commercial benefits and facilities, absence of patent cells in universities, no investment in research and development (R&D) both by the public and private sector and exploitation of natural resources instead of better knowledge creation,” said Mr Prasad. “We need to take advantage of the patent system; we need to have more academia, R&D and industry linkage.”

Highlighting the various trends in patent filing in India and internationally, Mr Prasad said, “In 2003-04 patent filings in India were around 12,500 it has gone up to more than 43,000 in the last year, but the distribution of patent filing between Indian and foreign applicants has remained around the same over these years as we have just around 20 per cent of Indian patent applicants for patents even in India while almost 80 per cent patents are still filed by a foreign company and foreign individuals in India and that is where we are lacking.”

Field-wise maximum patents in India are being filed in the area of mechanical engineering followed by chemical engineering, computers, electricals, drugs and biotechnology, informed the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks. “The stress towards mechanical and chemical does show that we need to go for more advanced technology and more advanced research in various fields.”

Individuals constitute over half of the total patent applications as of date followed by company and industry (26 per cent), R&D institutions are filing around 12 per cent and universities and institutes are filing around 8.2 per cent, he added. “A good trend that has emerged in the last 3-4 years is that universities the filing by universities and institutes has gone up while in 2009-10 it was around 6 per cent and it was 8.2 per cent last year.”

Informing about the patent filings by Indian and foreign universities, Mr Prasad informed, that in India, Amity university topped with 110 filings followed by IIT Bombay (109), IIT  Kharagpur (102) and there on. “In one year in the US (United States) by the University of California about 304 patent applications were filed, while in five years the top most Indian university could file on 110 patents, thus it shows we need to catch up considerably.”