New Delhi, November 15, 2016: To promote research and high-level dialogue on The National IPR Policy and related IPR issues the Jindal Initiative on Research in Intellectual Property and Competition (JIRICO) brought together leading public policy academics, practitioners, researchers, lawyers and government officials from India to participate in a day long workshop titled ‘Global Innovators Dialogue’, held in New Delhi.
The workshop deliberated on:
- The extent to which high-technology firms undertake innovative activity across sectors in India?
- The legal, policy and market-related obstacles faced by innovators.
- The role of government in enabling collaboration between industry and academia; the role played by industries in inducing innovation and knowledge and the issue of commercialization of IPs emanating from universities
Delivering the welcome address at the forum, Professor (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar, Vice Chancellor, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), underscored the need for creating an ecosystem that nurtured and promoted innovation, he said, “We need to create an ecosystem which enables and encourages and supports the possibility of innovation, and that is precisely what today’s conversation seeks to promote.”
Professor Kumar, further observed, “As a research intensive, global university, JGU has been attempting to advance the need for knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination in a range of areas and our schools have been continuously engaged in advancing that agenda.”
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Rajiv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Government of India, articulated how valuing and recognizing IP was a tough task in the country. He highlighted that in a country as diverse and wide as India, we still do not recognize our own IP’s. One of the toughest tasks India faces is making itself, it’s citizens and people realize and recognize their own IP’s.
Mr. Aggarwal, further observed that although the country had started focusing on IP issues, a lot more was needed to be done across all verticals and highlighted that while India’s ranking jumped from 81st to 66th this year in ‘The Global Innovation Index’, it is still not sufficient and a lot more still needs to be done, not only at the policy and legislative level, but also within government, industry and financial institutions.
Speaking at the session on changing dynamics of technological innovation in India that sought to discuss the IP and non-IP strategies adopted by firms to appropriate returns to innovation investments Mr. Abhay Vaish, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson Global Services, noted that while there are tremendous benefits that accrue out of IP, the power of IP from an industry perspective lies in monetization.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Rajan Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India, described that the entire genre of IP was driven by commercial interest. Dr. Mathews observed that if you are involved in IPR and patents and copyrights and the entire genre of similar ideas, then it is imperative to understand that 99.9% of these ideas are driven by commercial interests. That is the reason such investments are given over 17 years to recoup, as they are extremely high risk, and high risk requires high returns.
Highlighting that the issue was not of intent but one of resources when it came to research and development in the telecom sector he expressed that unfortunately in India, the telecom operators have never chosen to invest in R&D, because the consumers are not willing to pay for it.
Deliberating on the legal and policy obstacles in innovation and IPRs senior representatives of leading organizations like Tata Consultancy Services, SAP India, NASSCOM and Ericsson India discussed the trends and opportunities various innovators and non-innovators embrace while dealing with investment in heavy R&D and also the factors firms keep in mind to improve innovation while balancing the legal and policy obstacles.
Speaking at the session on legal and policy obstacles in innovation and IPRs, Ms. Bishakha Bhattacharya, Senior Director, NASSCOM, described that as a country, India traditionally has not been known to be a market which adopts innovative products, be it the government or the businesses. She observed that only recently has the government started giving grants, tax exemptions, announced new programmes like ‘Digital India’ etc. for which a lot of ground work is being done. She further pointed out that and it is yet to be seen if and when these efforts accrue into tangible results and that from a policy perspective there was a lot that needed to be done.
Representing, Tata Consultancy Services, Mr. K. Subodh Kumar, IP Program Head, described the theme of the session on legal and policy obstacles as an oxymoron as he believed the prime motive of following legal and policy guidelines was to remove and eliminate obstacles.
Speaking at a session on the role of universities and partnerships in fostering innovation, Mr. Ashutosh Chadha, Group Director, Govt. Affairs and Public Policy, Microsoft India, described how technology and innovation had a key role to play in driving sustainability, he noted that global challenges like, healthcare, water, climate change and affordable education will impact every business, irrespective of the business you are in. He further stressed that sustainability would be an underlying principle, for every single individual whether you are from academia, government or a business enterprise so that now when one starts looking at innovation, one needs to see how innovation can help address these challenges in the long run.
Dr. Rekha Chaturvedi, MHRD IPR Chair Professor, Cluster Innovation Centre, University of Delhi, described how university laboratories constantly generate new technologies but are financially constrained to even sustain their ongoing research. She spoke on issues of commercialization and collaborative projects with industry participation in IP and said that significant R&D was being undertaken in both academic and government institutions by students, scholars and scientists but all of them required external funding, support and development by licensees to bring those ideas to the public in the form of innovative products or services.
Jindal Initiative on Research in IP and Competition (JIRICO) is an initiative of O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU). It focuses on initiating and complementing well-informed policy related deliberations that can result in concrete reforms.
In their ongoing research, JIRICO aims to systematically collect unique and original data from companies, research labs, universities and other organizations in India on enablers of innovation activity; mechanisms to safeguard R&D and innovation expenditure; obstacles to innovation; and sdrivers for patenting or not patenting the innovation outcomes.