Ericsson to support IIT students in developing patents

Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson today announced a programme to help IIT engineers develop technology patents and said that intellectual property rights will be owned by the developer team or students.
Under the programme, the company will select two projects which will get a funding of Rs 10 lakh each and developers may even get access to its labs for development of the product.
"We are seeking to encourage the culture of innovation within the IITs and to support these talented young minds to develop more innovative and relevant solutions for the benefit of industry," Ericsson Head of India Region Chris Houghton said in a statement.

Ericsson will select for two projects for Ericsson Innovation awards. The selected project will be given 10 lakh each. Depending on the nature of project, the developer or team of developers may even get access to Ericsson Lab for development of product.
"The winners will receive a funding of Rs 10 lakh each for incubation of the project over a two-year period. Secondly, the patents will remain with the students," Houghton said.
At present, government runs a programme for promoting technical Intellectual Property Rights in which Indian innovator gets only 40 per cent of revenue generated from the patent. India is considered hub of research and development but majority of IPRs are owned by foreign based multi-national companies.

The award has called for innovations in areas such as web design, cloud computing, storage and networking, human-machine interface, embedded and hardware system design, machine-to-machine or Internet of Things, open source, signal processing, graphics and visualization, as well as research.

"Ericsson has invited project proposals in these areas from IIT students across Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Roorkee and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi," the statement said.
Following the preliminary screening phase at their respective IITs, the student proposals will be shortlisted through two jury sessions.
In the first round, the jury will shortlist up to 10 proposals on criteria such as degree of innovation, feasibility, usability, relevance, time to market and the overall impact on masses. Each shortlisted proposal will be given an incentive by Ericsson to complete the initial prototype within three months.

In the second round, the jury will select up to two innovation projects which will be announced in a ceremony in April 2015 and these projects will get support from Ericsson.