The Hindu Business Line : IISc fine-tuning IP policy for its tech

IMAGINE a public research and academic body talking business with companies across the table, setting terms of ownership of its intellectual sweat, the royalty and profits it deserves or sharing revenues and costs of taking tech to market. Or can you?

The "hitherto sleeping partner" has woken and will soon be demanding its pound of flesh in intellectual property. The Indian Institute of Science, turning 100 in five years, is giving the final touches to an Intellectual Property Policy. Replete with an IP cell under an IP management committee, the policy will define how IISc and partner companies would legally split ownership of its technology, besides profits and costs from it.

The policy should be out in June or July. "The institute has been interacting with over 400 domestic and global companies on sponsored and joint research projects. We dealt with them in an open-ended manner. Now, this institute will not have any interaction with industry without (including) the IP issue," IISc Director, Dr Goverdhan Mehta, told Business Line.

The only exception would be socially relevant or public health areas where Prof Mehta said, "IISc would happily waive the IP issue."

On a day celebrated by CSIR labs and research institutes as Technology Day, Dr Mehta unveiled 100 select patented technologies ready for transfer from IISc to the industry. These, he said, were only 60 per cent of the best of the IISc portfolio in biology, bioinformatics, vaccines, diagnostics and communications.

As for their material worth, Dr Mehta said one indication was the turnover that IISc's industry links, the Centre for Scientific & Industrial Consultancy and the Society for Innovation & Development, earn Rs 20 crore a year.

"Let's say I'm looking for a blockbuster, not just worth crores but at something like a billion dollars. And we are on the way."

IISc has also signed an MoU with IIT-Mumbai, on a joint IP strategy, said Prof M.L. Munjal, Chairman of Mechanical Sciences Division and chairman of the IP policy drafting committee.

Prof Munjal called it a shift from "common sense to commerce" in the way the institute was treating its research products today. "Until recently, we were just old fashioned scientists and engineers who were happy to publish papers while industry collaborators took away the IP by default. Only in the last few years, we started waking up to this new reality."

IISc is trying to convince its purists about the benefits of business and the culture of entrepreneurship. "Our motivation is not only to augment resources, but to promote enterprise." Yet, that would not dent the basic research that the institute prides itself in.

Two new start-ups on cards: Three years ago, IISc began encouraging scientists to take time off, form start-ups and itself took a stake in them. Soon, Prof Mehta said, two new start-ups would join its band of four that includes PicoPeta Simputer and bioinformatics company Strand Genomics.

The new ones will be virtual enterprise solutions company VXP from the Mechanical Engineering stable and Esqube (`s-cube') in the field of sensors and wireless communication solutions.

A sample from the store

`STRATIFIED charge engine' may sound awesome.

Its low-fuel, low-exhaust effect should soon be felt on the roads. Here is a concept that TVS Motors nursed and bought from IISc's Mechanical Engineering Department for its upcoming two-wheeler. IISc got Rs 10 lakh each for two years and will soon be receiving one per cent of royalty on engine cost.

The TVS product itself would be riding on six IISc patents and over Rs 3-crore investment.

This, says IISc, is just a sample of its ammunition in which several industry majors have shown interest, from GM, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and Ashok Leyland. From aerospace, mechanical and electrical engineering to biochemistry and ecological sciences, IISc's departments are telling industries about their wares, that range from high energy density lead acid battery, truly disposable, single-use syringes; high-return silica ash from rice husk to cryo-grinding for the food industry.

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