What research exactly is patentable? What are the legal issues involved? If the student pursues a research using university infrastructure, is the outcome students' intellectual property?
All these questions by Delhi University (DU) students and teachers will be answered soon as the varsity is in the process of drafting an Intellectual Property (IP) policy to facilitate registration of patents, copyrights and trademarks by its students and teachers.
DU's Intellectual Property Rights Cell was established in 2008 with an view to helping researchers, inventors and creators manage their intellectual property rights through the legal machinery and also to manage its commercial aspects.
While, initially, the cell was headed by Dean of Research, the Human Resource Development ministry had earlier this year constituted an IPR Chair at DU.
"Students and researchers need to know what exactly will be patentable while they are pursuing a research? In the lack of a proper policy, researchers are often unaware of the dos and don'ts and face difficulty in dealing with legal and commercial issues," said Dr Rekha Chaturvedi, MHRD IPR Chair Professor (Technical).
The policy is expected to deliberate upon ownership patterns of the patents or trademarks, IP rights of students, teachers and visiting professors, copyright policy, licensing policy, patent funds, division of payment structure, IPR issues in digital domain, patentability assessment, invention disclosures and plagiarism, among others.
"Patent registration is a time consuming and expensive process and it's not that the job is done once a patent is registered, it's an equally tedious process to maintain the patents and commercialise it," she said.
"So, we decided to formulate a policy which, once in place, will be strictly adhered to while dealing with such aspects. Clarity on the process involved and the rights of the researchers will encourage more students and teachers to take up constructive research and get it patented," added Chaturvedi.
