New Delhi, Apr 4  (KNN)  Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India will now be able to buy or sell their intellectual  property rights with the help of an online IPR Exchange which has been set up by the industry body FISME with support from the British High Commission.

Be it intellectual property rights (IPRs) of technological inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images and designs or copyrights of poems, films, music, paintings or radio or TV recordings,  each of them can be traded online on the IPR Exchange set up by the Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME).

The exchange was inaugurated by Secretary in the Ministry of MSME Madhav Lal.  Senior officials of the British High Commission were also present on the occasion of the launch of the exchange.

“The IPR Exchange created by FISME with the help of British High Commission creates a wonderful mechanism to extract value of all the knowledge based initiatives an enterprise has taken.  Its promise of converting such knowledge-based initiative into money is worth giving a serious push,” Lal said.

He said in a 30 million strong sector (MSME) in a billion strong country, “we need initiatives that could be scaled up to make appreciable impact.”

In his message, FISME President D Gandhikumar said, “A business case –evaluating a decision from the perspective of profitability, demands that for the protected intellectual property to be bought, sold, assigned or transferred like any other physical property, its value ought to be ascertained through a market based mechanism. The IPR exchange aims to do just that.”

The IPR Exchange, the first in India, not only offers a platform to buy or sell IPRs but would also provide e-vaults, duly protected through secure passwords for safe storage of their unique inventions or other creations.

It would also help the entrepreneurs to assess valuation of their IPRs through a specialised service.  

FISME, a federation of more than 700 grass-root level industry associations has been actively involved in the promotion of IPRs through various initiatives like the IP Facilitation Centres (IPFCS).  The centres spread in various cities - Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore help the MSMEs file their IPR applications; offering them other legal services for a nominal fee.  So far, FISME has helped entrepreneurs file 73 IPR applications…

However, commercial exchange for IPR was a missing link which has been filled with the opening up of the IPR Exchange. 

Gandhikumar said FISME has been taking more initiatives in the area of IPR.  These include consultation programmes in the industrial clusters for proprietary technologies and IP audit services.  (KNN)