Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws and policies are all getting some momentum as research and development is now happening on a very large scale in India as the environment is being made conducive for it, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.
“So we try to make them (IPR laws) as a facilitator, enabler and certainly not a barrier in the process of R&D. “We have taken quite a few steps and I thank the Prime Minister in particular for this particular policy, which emerged after much consultation in 2016,” she said.
The law is a balance between protection for those who innovate and the commercial propositions through which patents can benefit society, she said at Justice Prathiba M Singh’s book launch on patent law.
Sharing details of the law, Sitharaman said, eight different items that have something to do with intellectual property have all been brought together under one umbrella.
Everything related to intellectual property rights policy management now falls under one framework, be it patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyrights, geographical indications, semiconductor integrated circuit design, trade secrets and also plant varieties, she said.
The legislative framework is in line with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), she said, adding: “It is necessarily intended to protect intellectual property rights and as I said before, it tries to strike a balance between patent protection and the development interests they have. to address”.
Speaking about the steps taken to encourage more patents and also registration of patents, the minister said, the government has reduced the fee for startups and MSMEs and also for educational institutions.
“We are speeding up investigations and ensuring that specific groups of applicants are treated with a little more care and efficiency,” she said.
There is a specific plan that the government has released, a plan for intellectual property rights pedagogy and research for holistic education and academia, she added.
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First print: March 9, 2024 | 7:56 PM IST