IPR workshop participants motivated to file patents

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 4

The Innovation Club of Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology organised a workshop on ‘Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights Filing’.

Nearly 1,000 participants from various reputed institutes had registered for the event. Prof Lalit Kumar Awasthi, director, NIT inaugurated the workshop and said: “The foremost purpose of the workshop is to encourage the creation of a large variety of intellectual goods. We need to change the challenges of pandemic to opportunities. This can only be harnessed if you look for innovations, IPR filings and startups.”

Prof Awasthi motivated participants to file patents and said their ideas must become intellectual property rights.

Divya Kaushik, scientist, Punjab State Council for Science and Technology, and Dipan Sahu, Assistant Innovation Director, national coordinator, IIC, AICTE, MHRD, Delhi, were the experts. Divya Kaushik discussed different forms of Intellectual Property Rights. She shared databases for searching patent, design and trademark such as USPTO, ESPACE (EPO), InPASS (IPO), Google patents. Kaushik also discussed the process of IPR filing. She said one can file a patent through PIC/TISC, patent attorney and on his own through e-filing) at www.ipindia.nic.in. Digital signatures, drafting skills and net banking/debit card/credit card are the requirements of filing a patent. She lucidly explained patent grant procedure.

Dipan Sahu focused on National Innovation and Startup Policy (NISP) for HEIs. Sahu said only 46,600 applications were filed in 2017 and patent grants came to just 12,000 in a country of 1.37 billion people.