The Hindu Business Line : Academia taking to patenting, but slowly

HOW many patents do you think the country's prestigious universities such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; Banaras Hindu University , Varanasi; University of Hyderabad, Anna University, Chennai; and Jadavpur University, Kolkata would have obtained in four years.

Could it be 100, 200, 500, 1,000 or more? The answer perhaps could stump you. It's a paltry combined total of 15 patents during the four-year period between 1999 and 2002.

If this is not enough to depress you, the grand total number of patents filed by 57 Indian universities and other academic institutions during the same period was a meagre 132. But from the perspective of these centres of academia, the number represents a 244 per cent increase, if compared to the earlier four-year period of 1995-98, when just 54 patent applications were filed.

The seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) have done marginally better in comparison. From 98 patents during 1995-98, the number has grown to 183 in 1999-2002, an 187 per cent increase, according to a study done by the Patent Facilitating Centre, of the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council. The Indian academic institutions, which demonstrated a rather `lukewarm' attitude towards patenting during the 1990s, finally seem to have upped its antenna in protecting innovations since 2000. The net result is at least 62 Indian academic institutions, including the seven IITs and IISc, have increased their patent applications to 315. In comparison, when you see the trend of the number of academic institutions involved in patenting was nine in 1995, which went up to 22 in 1999 and 29 in 2000, the overall picture about the awareness and interest in obtaining patents gets clearer, the Patent Facilitating Centre study said.

Though the recent development of more and more universities coming forward to protect their innovative research work is welcome, the total number of patent applications filed with the Indian Patent Offices is hovering around just 40 during the last three years.

Dr Kota Harinarayana, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, said efforts have been initiated to increase awareness and also file more patents. Dr Harinarayana, a former Project Director of the Light Combat Aircraft, who took over as the VC last year, said, "I was surprised to realise that the university had hardly any patents to its name."

While focus on publishing research papers in scientific journals has been cited as one of the reason's for low patenting, lack of adequate funds required to obtain patent protection and maintaining them, especially for foreign patents has been an issue, given the low budgets with which most Indian universities have to operate. The IITs and IISc are definitely better funded.