The Hindu Business Line : Law on market revenues for scientists planned

FORMAL CHAT: Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science and Technology, with Dr Naresh Trehan, Executive Director, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, and Ms Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, CMD, Biocon India, at the India Economic Summit in the Capital on Tuesday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Nov. 28

With an aim to incentivise innovation, the Government plans to bring a legislation that assures that not less than 30 per cent of revenues earned from licence fee or commercialisation of a project goes to the scientist(s) who worked on the project.

The legislation envisages accrual of another 30 per cent of fees to the project, while 40 per cent of the licence fees should be ploughed back to the institution where the project was taken up.

The legislation is called the Public Funding of R&D Project (Protection of IP) Act.

This law would be applicable to all public funded research and academic institutions, said Union Minister for Science and Technology Mr Kapil Sibal at the Indian Economic Summit.

While the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) already has such norms, universities, IITs and IISc have internal processes, and levels of revenue share vary widely.

While some institutions do not incentivise the innovators at all, some pay over 30 per cent of licence fees.

The draft of this legislation is ready and would soon be put up on the Ministry Website for public comments, said Mr Sibal, adding that the legislation would be introduced during the Budget session of Parliament.

He added that the Government would launch a scheme that would enable women to work from their homes.

Ms Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, stressed on the need to create an ecosystem for encouraging academic research by ensuring funding by private and Government sectors.

In the developed world, innovation carries a high cost of failure. But India's advantage lies in the low cost of doing research. India must, therefore, leverage the low-cost advantage to deliver high-value innovation, she said.

Dr Naresh Trehan, Executive Director of the Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, said that in order to take care of medical delivery to a population of over a billion the country needs to explore traditional healthcare and medicine.

"Indian Universities are facing a serious problem with very few students taking up research and the best minds in the faculty retiring," said Mr Hari S. Bhartia, co-Chairman and Managing Director of Jubilant Organosys.

Inviting young scientists from India to undertake collaborative research, Mr Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan, said: "Japan has strengths in areas such as solar energy and water management and can collaborate with countries to find innovative solutions that will benefit a large number of people."

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