Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Sunday, Oct 16, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Sunday, Oct 16, 2005 |
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Info-Tech
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IPR Microsoft patent filings up 5 times in 2004 M. Somasekhar
Hyderabad , Oct 15 INDIA seems to have suddenly emerged the hot favourite for Microsoft. In 2004, the company saw a surge in patents filed by it in the country. Microsoft's tally of 306 patent applications in 2004 is five times the previous year's 67 and nearly 22 times that of the 2002 filings. A major reason behind this could be the amendments to the Patents Act in May 2003, according to the Patent Facilitating Centre (PFC) of the Technology Information Forecasting Assessment Council (TIFAC). Till May 2003, India did not allow grant of patents in software. However, the amendments brought in thereafter mention that patents for software per se would not be granted. This stipulation, however, opens up a new area, that a software will be patentable if it is not a software per se. This provision would lead to opportunities and scope for many different interpretations to specific situations. Microsoft appears to be fully aware of such legal openings. "We observe this distinct behaviour in respect of Indian filings," the PFC said in a focussed study on Microsoft's patenting in India. The PFC's analysis of patents filed by the company brings out some interesting features. For example, though Microsoft has been in India for over 10 years, its interest in filing patents in the county was non-existent. In 1998 it filed one application, and none in 1999. This pattern continued the next two years. From 2002, things changed. Microsoft has not made much effort in the direction of protecting its innovations through patents in India. The PFC study said that that the Indian Patent Act's silence on software patenting could be the cause. Microsoft has claimed patent protection in India in areas such as data management (42), network (39), Web-related like e-mail (30), graphics, image (20), encryption, security, authentication (17), wireless (10), speech recognition, database and architecture (9 each).
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