Patents

Article by Vineet Kumar Goyal, Counsellor, Technology & IPR Division

Anuradha Mazumdar, Executive Officer, Technology & IPR Division

What do you think is common to these Indian software professionals - Ashish Belagali, Columbus Sivashunmugam, Kakarla Satyanarayan and Amit Jaipuria?

This interesting finding has come out in a study done by the Patent Facility Centre (PFC), under the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC). Two reasons, the study attributed for this trend are: Many software companies fall under the category of small-scale industries, which may be proprietorship. Secondly, the filing fee is Rs 1,500 for an individual against Rs 5,000 for a company. Consequently, filing in the name of an individual may have been a preferred option.

In the category of companies, the listed ones were ST Microelectronics of UP, Webdunia.Com, Tata Consultancy, Texas Instruments, NIIT, Sony India, Silicon Automation, Autocodes, Bharatplanet.Com and Banyan Network.

The Indian Institute of Technologies, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the University of Delhi were among the research institutes with software innovation claims.

Indian software prowess is well established globally and hence has to be driven by innovation. But, how clued in is it to protecting the innovation in this highly competitive sector? Posing this question, the PFC study looked at data of software-related patents from both the Indian and the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO), to see in which direction the industry was moving.

While software-related patents have been granted by the US for sometime now, India, till the recent amendments to its Patent Act, did not permit software patents. Hence, first the low numbers and...

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