The Hindu Business Line : 80 plus Corus patents for Tata Steel likely

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New Delhi Feb. 3 Method and device for the electrolytic coating of a metal strip. Nickel-plated brazing product having improved corrosion performance. A process and device for producing a high-strength steel strip. Method of producing a high-strength balanced Al-Mg-Si alloy and a weldable product of that alloy.

If all this sounds Greek to you, well, they are simply four of the 80-plus patents that have been filed and assigned to the Corus Group by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). So, as and when Tata Steel completes the formalities of its $12.1-billion acquisition of the Anglo-Dutch metals major, it would end up becoming the owner of these patents as well.

To understand what this really means, one has to merely contrast the Corus Group's 81 patents with the nine of the Tatas, as per a quick search of the USPTO's patent database (www.uspto.gov) . The database reveals that out of the nine patents awarded to the Tata Group, as many as six have been assigned to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with Tata America International Corporation (a New York-based subsidiary of the Group) accounting for two and Tata Tea Ltd the remaining one.

Significantly, Tata Steel does not have a single patent granted in its name by the USPTO. Since in today's world, a company's technological prowess is benchmarked largely by the number of patents filed and awarded to it — and USPTO is considered the ultimate repository — it only goes to show the extent of the knowledge gap between the acquirer and the to-be-taken-over entity.

The purchase of Corus, in other words, would not just enable Tata Steel to more than quadruple its steel production capacity virtually overnight. The deal will also give it access to Corus' high-end technology, design and innovation infrastructure embedded in the latter's patents and 950-odd researchers across Britain and the Netherlands.

The USPTO patents owned by the Tata companies now range from "method and apparatus for pattern-based generation of graphical user interfaces" (granted to TCS) to "method of processing green tea leaves to produce black tea that can be brewed in cold water" (Tata Tea).

More Stories on : IPR | Mergers & Acquisitions | Steel | Tata Steel Ltd

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