Govt to launch awareness campaign on IPR

In order to create awareness about intellectual property rights in the wake of new IPR policy, the government will launch an awareness programme in 25 universities and institutes across 21 states, starting this Tuesday.
"The objective of this IPRs campaign is to create awareness about IP in the academia in the wake of new IPR policy being launched by government of India and connecting IPRs to the Make in India and Start up India programs of Government of India," said a statement by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit to the UK had told a business gathering in London that a comprehensive National IPR policy was being finalised to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship in India.

National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), an Enterprise of the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research, Ministry of S&T in association with the office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM), under Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry will look at the awareness and capacity building workshops in 25 Universities /Institutions in 21 states, starting from November 24, it said.
The one-day programmes will specifically target students, research scholars, teaching faculty and scientists. They are designed in such a way that lectures provide an insight into different forms of IPRs, innovation ecosystem, procedural requirements for protection, maintenance, enforcement, commercialisation, licensing and transfer of IPRs, about challenges faced by the IP ecosystem stakeholders and institutional mechanisms available for protecting IPR.

This campaign will be an opportunity for participants to learn about the mechanism of accessing and using IP information for further research and development in developing new products and processes and for their use, it added.

H Purushotham, Chairman & Managing Director, NRDC, said providing facilitation and techno-financial support for filing patent application in India is one of the important promotional activities of the organisation.
Over the years NRDC has filed more than 1600 patents for innovations from different segment of society including SMEs/ researchers/ scientists/ students and individual inventors and it has sensitised approximately 50,000 SMEs/ researchers/ scientists/ students and individual inventors through conducting IPR workshops/seminars etc.

NRDC has also established an Intellectual Property Facilitation Centre (IPFC) at Pune in Maharashtra.