India has unveiled a new National Intellectual Property Rights Policy to safeguard commercial interests arising from creativity – like music, books, industrial drawings, software and even drugs and pharmaceuticals.
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It may also take India off a USA trade watch list that lists it as having “longstanding systemic deficiencies”. The policy notes that India is in sync with trade related intellectual property rights agreement of the World Trade Organization.
Interestingly, among other things, it allows the window for trademark registration down to one month by 2017. Find us on Facebook too!
“It sets in place an institutional mechanism for implementation, monitoring and review besides aiming to incorporate and adapt global best practices to the Indian scenario”, the government said in a statement on Friday.
Rresponding to a query on US’ concerns, Jaitley said our model seems to be both legal, equitable and WTO-compliant. We do believe that the balancing act which India has struck is responsible for life-saving drugs available at a reasonable cost in India compared to the rest of the world.
“This single umbrella approach will help leverage linkages between various IP offices”. Meanwhile, defending India’s stand, Jaitley said availability of medicines at reasonable cost is necessary, adding that the patent period beyond 20 years can be extended only if there is a fresh invention and not a marginalalteration.
Hailing the move, industry body Nasscom said the new policy has captured issues, including difficulties that companies face in monetising intangibles like IPR, suitably and the proposal to create a “simple loan guarantee scheme to encourage start-ups” based on IPRs as mortgageable assets; financial support and securitisation of IPRs for commercialisation by enabling valuation of IP rights as intangible assets through of appropriate methodologies and guidelines, and enabling legislative, administrative and market framework are in the right direction. To stimulate the generation of IPRs.
“The focus of the policy is on maintaining the balance between rights and interests of intellectual property right owners with larger public interest, which is extremely relevant for a country like India, being a repository of not just indigenous creativity and ingenuity but also traditional and oral knowledge”, he added.
Administration and Management – To modernize and strengthen service-oriented IPR administration.
Get value for IPRs through commercialization.
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The vision document of the IPR Policy, a first for India, is aimed to create synergies between all forms of intellectual property, concerned statutes and agencies. These included IPR public awareness, stimulation of generation of IPRs, need for strong and effective laws and strengthening enforcement and adjudicatory mechanisms to combat infringements.
