Managing Innovations and Successful Commercialisation of Intellectual Property Assets

WIPO, FICCI & NBAI : CONFERENCE ON IPR

WIPO, FICCI & NBAI :

CONFERENCE ON IPR

"Managing Innovations and Successful Commercialisation of Intellectual Property Assets"

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) in association with World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and National Bar Association of India (NBAI) organised a conference on “Managing Innovations and Successful Commercialisation of Intellectual Property Assets” on 24-25th July at Hotel Lalit, Mumbai. The conference was inaugurated by Dr. Ruchi Tiwari, Deputy Controller of Patents & Designs, Intellectual Property Office. Dr. Ruchi spoke that patent office realizes its responsibilities to improve IP protection process. She said there has been a significant increase in the number of patent IP filings over the past few years but much more is needed to further enhance the number of IP filings from India.

Shri Naresh Prasad, Executive Director and Chief of Staff, WIPO (Switzerland) delivered the keynote address. He said in modern day market economies, innovation has been identified as the key ingredient for sustained economic growth. In high income countries, studies have estimated that innovation accounts for as much as 80 per cent of economy wide growth in productivity. Research at the firm level shows that firms that innovate out-perform the non-innovating peers. He highlighted India stands at 64th in Global innovation index and investing 0.75 percent of its GDP in R&D activities. He suggested for becoming the leader in the innovation, India needs to increase its percentage share for its R&D activities.

In his address, Mr. Prasad also applauded the recent efforts taken by the Indian Government to spur innovation which includes sectoral innovation councils on IPR which aims to prepare a national IPR strategy that incentivizes innovation and allows diffusion of new technologies to micro, small and medium sized enterprises in India. The NIC’s innovation cluster initiatives seeking to establish 50 innovation clusters by the end of 2012 holds out the promise of providing the sort of cross cutting multi sectoral connections that are needed at the grassroots level to foster bottom-up innovation.

Ms. Sheetal Chopra, Head-IPR Division mentioned that India does have robust laws which reward innovators for its creation. She suggested we need to create awareness and encourage our MSMEs to register their creation.

Mr. Dinesh Jotwani, CEO, National Bar Association of India, in his address emphasized the vast potential of generating Intellectual Property in India due to presence of strong Indian MSME sector. He mentioned if an enterprise is successfully able to manage their IP then they can easily commercialise them as well.

During the course of two days, the conference witnessed discussion on best strategies to leverage Intellectual Property among the (large, medium and small) businesses in India. It will enable IP thought-leaders to focus on key elements to boost and manage innovations, strategies to protect and effectively manage and commercialise IP assets etc.