According to a top official’s recent statement, the Indian Government shall soon come up with a scheme to fund 10k Patent Applications from educational institutes every year. This move’s ultimate aim is to motivate and encourage more students and faculty members to safeguard their Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) well. Furthermore, as per many officials, the scheme shall help the higher education institutions of India to improve their rankings worldwide by performing well in the domain of research and development.
The Chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC), M Jagadesh Kumar, said that the scheme in question would help the students of higher education institutions and faculty members seek funding from the Indian Government to patent their innovations and inventions. He further added that around 10k patent applications would be funded by the Commission every year.
Mr. Kumar said that as part of the scheme – the higher education regulator would invite students and faculty members from colleges and universities to submit their patent applications. He mentioned that in their university system, the major focus is on publishing papers; however, the ecosystem today has changed, due to which there is a dire need to protect Intellectual Property (IP). According to Mr. Kumar, the upcoming scheme would encourage the students and faculty members to go for patenting.
The Chairperson of IPRs at the Delhi University, AK Prasad, said in a recent statement delivered that the move to institutionalize funding for patents is now welcome, which shall help evaluate the commercial value of patents and also lead to the commercialization of more patents.
Filing patent applications can undoubtedly be a costly affair. The cost of filing a patent application lies between Rs. 10k and Rs. 15k in India; however, in countries such as the United States, the cost of safeguarding innovations in the form of patents can run into lacs.
According to Mr. Prasad, filing patents is less of a problem than the maintenance that comes into the picture after the patent grant. He said that a patent requires continuous input of money the moment it gets filed as the owner has to pay against every inquiry and revision. He further mentioned that once the patent gets published, it requires a maintenance fee for twenty years and that maintenance fee is a big issue in India’s patent system.
Let’s say you have a project and file its patent application today. Now let us assume that tomorrow the project gets over. In such a scenario, you can’t maintain the patent. Now that is where the scheme in question shall prove to be beneficial. According to Mr. Prasad, the UGC shall cover patent maintenance under the proposed scheme.
For quite a while, the education ministry has been encouraging students and faculty members in higher education institutions across the country to patent their innovations and inventions. In May 2022, the Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in the Government of India, Dharmendra Pradhan, said in a seminar organized at the Delhi University that the times are now changing, and the citizens of India aren’t being able to patent their innovations. In this matter, he suggested that Delhi University could begin a short-term diploma course on the patent grant process.
Although there has been an upward trend of patenting in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) over the past few years, other higher education institutions in the nation are still catching up.
According to Mr. Kumar, the upcoming amendments in the Ph.D. regulations would also recommend students and faculty members file patent applications for their innovations and inventions. He also mentioned that while the UGC is putting an end to the mandatory requirement of publishing research papers in peer-reviewed journals for submitting the thesis, they strongly recommend that students and faculty members patent their innovations. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com
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