Central University of Punjab organized National Webinar on Recent Trends of Patenting in India
Bathinda: Central University of Punjab, Bathinda (CUPB) organized a National Webinar on “Recent Trends of Patenting in India”. CUPB Department of Economics in collaboration with Institution’s Innovation Council (IIC) conducted this program under the patronage of Vice Chancellor Prof. Raghavendra P. Tiwari. The keynote speaker of this programme was Prof. Sunil Mani, Director, Centre for Development Studies, Kerala.
While addressing the participants, Keynote Speaker Prof. Sunil Mani discussed in detail the trends and developments of patenting in India. He started his session by giving an overview of patents and its brief history in India. He explained that patents provide protection to new invention from commercial competition for a limited period. He informed that patents in India are governed by the Indian Patents Act (1970), which was last amended in 2016, where Product Patent was extended to all field of technology including IT sector and patents in Intellectual Property Rights. While presenting the figures of patent applications filed from 2012-17, Prof. Sunil Mani observed that during these years the filing of patent applications has remained more or less the same with just 4 % increase in these years. He expressed his concern that most of the patents in India are made by IITs, Multi-National Companies and the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry. He emphasized that our country needs to diversify its Patent Portfolio to come at par with major patent destination such as China, Japan and the United States. He stressed that to achieve the objective of Atam-Nirbhar Bharat, the Domestic Companies of India along with Education & Research Institutes should come forward to register their patents in good numbers. During this webinar, participants interacted with the expert speaker during the discussion session.
The programme commenced with the welcome address by Prof. S.K. Bawa, Advisor, CUPB IIC, where she put a light on the webinar topic & introduced the expert speaker. The programme was coordinated by Dr. Sandeep Kaur, HoD, Dept. of Economics. Towards the end Prof. Monisha Dhiman, President IIC delivered the formal vote of thanks. The programme was attended by CUPB faculty, administrators & students.