MC&I | Anurag Jain Secretary DPIIT inaugurates Conference on Intellectual Property

On the occasion of this World IP day, DPIIT and FICCI are organizing a conference on “Leveraging India’s Demographic Dividend through IP” , which is akin to WIPOs theme focusing on IP and Youth innovating for a Better Future. The conference was inaugurated by Secretary DPIIT, Shri. Anurag Jain.

The Government of India, with an intent to modernise the IP office and reduce legal compliances, along with facilitating filing of IP applications especially by Start-ups, Small and medium enterprises, individual innovators has adopted a slew of administrative and legislative reforms to transform India’s IPR regime. The intent in reforming the IPR administration embodies the thought process and approach followed by the Government in other important reform areas i.e., Ease of Doing Business, Compliance Reduction, Transparency in Administration. Another important objective has been to take the Intellectual Property to the grass-root level and ensure the innovations happening at the local and grass-root levels also seek protection under the respective IP laws and the individual innovators are able to seek commercial benefits through protection of their ideas and innovation.

These initiatives have made a remarkable impact on the IP filings and registrations being granted. There is a five-fold increase in the grant of patent annually, and a four-fold increase in Trademark registration every year since 2014. This has taken India on the global IP map, being 5^th in case of Trademark filing and 7^th in case of Patents filed annually among all IP offices. This improved performances also captured in improvement of India’s ranking under the WIPOs Global Innovation Index from 81^st in 2015 to 46^th in 2021. Further, a large improvement has been noticed in domestic filing of IP applications across all right areas and especially in Patents, where 46 % increase has been noticed in the last 5 years. In fact for the quarter of Jan-Mar, 2022, for the first time in 11 years, domestic patent filing has surpassed the foreign filing in India, demonstrating the booming innovation culture in the country.

With this enhanced focus on supporting an innovation driven development strategy, the Government has been encouraging youth in all fields including technology or creative industry to spearhead innovations and continuously make advancements. This year’s theme of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) further substantiates India’s vision to inculcate the culture of innovation and creativity in its ecosystem.

The day-long conference brought together major stakeholders of innovation ecosystem such as policymakers, IP office, academia, startups, MSMEs, creative industry, businesses and research institutes. The conference would cover diverse topics starting from need for making the youth IP savvy and progressing to IP commercialisation. It would also touch upon the development of IP regime in India and the role IP plays in the creative and innovation sectors, startups and MSMEs.

The World IP day is event is being celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the country with the DPIIT, IPR chairs organizing several events such as workshops, panel discussions, quiz, essay competition and bootcamp to celebrate the World IP day over a span of one week. The participants gaining through these events would include students, faculty, researchers and scientists.

The National IPR Policy was the first step towards India’s vision of being among top knowledge-based economies. It created an institutional mechanism for implementation, monitoring and review along with incorporating and adapting global best practices to the Indian scenario. The clarion call of National IPR policy “Creative India, Innovative India” has been a guiding force behind the initiatives taken by the government through various Ministries and Departments such as DPIIT, Ministry of MSME, Ministry of Education, Department of Science and Technology and Niti Aayog, AIM.