New Delhi, Apr 28 (KNN) The government is taking steps, including hiring manpower, to reduce the patent application examination time to 18 months, said Rajiv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

Intellectual Property Rights regime in India was undergoing a process of re-engineering. With the government and industry collaborating, the good dividends had already started coming in, said Aggarwal while addressing at a conference on ‘IP: Innovation to Drive Business and Competitiveness’.

The event was organized by FICCI in association with DIPP to commemorate the World Intellectual Property Day 2017.

Aggarwal said the government was taking steps, including hiring manpower, to reduce the patent application examination time to 18 months.

Alluding to the need of embedding the culture of IP early in life, Aggarwal said that a new drive had been initiated where awareness programs on IP were being run in schools as it would also enable in taking forward the agenda of innovation.

The conference aimed to capture the essence and increasing IP buzz in the country while providing a useful forum for various IP stakeholders to deliberate on the importance and potential of generating, protecting, enforcing, commercializing, and incorporating IP and innovation in the core of business strategies.

 The deliberations focused on how IP supported innovation by attracting investment, rewarded creators and encouraged them to develop their ideas ensuring, at the same time, that the emergent knowledge was ultimately available for the future innovators to develop further on the existing knowhow.

The forum served as a platform for leading IP experts from India and abroad to discuss how to ensure that, in the days to come, IP and Innovation become the driving force for business growth and competitiveness in India as well as globally.

In his address, Narendra Sabharwal, Chair, FICCI IP Committee & formal Deputy General, WIPO, who was also on the drafting committee of the new IPR Policy, said that a baseline survey should be undertaken by the stakeholders to audit the progress in the IP space, which would help in identifying the priorities as well as the gaps in the system. He added that economic impact studies should also be carried.

Sabharwal said that there was a need to strengthen enforcement, especially, in the online arena and focus on appropriate commercialization of IP assets. He added that creation of human capital should be accorded priority.