| | AUGUST 20169Consultants Reviewcountries' innovation potential. For instance, from 1970-1995, when India's patent regime did not offer product claims, people had no incentive to innovate and hence the domestic patent filings remained stagnant with no noticeable increase. However, as soon as India ratified the TRIPS Agreement, domestic patent filings increased. Amendments that allowed for product patenting in India, in compliance with TRIPS, encouraged domestic inventors to look at IPRs/patenting more seriously. This led to increase in domestic patent filings. It is interesting to see that from 1999-2005, domestic patent filings outnumbered foreign filings. However, post 2005, foreign filings substantially outnumbered domestic filings primarily because of the greater interest in India's economy in other countries, and the scale of the foreign investor's community.For the trend of domestic filings to improve and to boost domestic patent filings, it is advisable to build nation-wide sensitization on the importance of IPRs, ease administrative procedures, create and continue to build capacities of IPR trainers/mentors etc. Additional initiatives would be welcome to further promote the culture of innovation. For instance, one could think of adequate incentives so that innovation forms part of DNA of every company and each individual. The laws of countries like Germany, Japan, and Australia provide profit sharing between the company and the employee-inventor if the company chooses to claim the invention created by the employee. This encourages employees to be creative and share their ideas with the company they work for.Conclusion: Steering India's Path as an Innovation Driven EconomyAs discussed above, the Indian government has gone through several initiatives in recent years which have provided an excellent basis to foster the knowledge economy in India. In order to promote innovation in India it is not necessary to implement drastic reform in the current patent system, but rather to encourage a mindset change that builds a respectable IPR culture. This ambitious goal could be achieved by combining several soft initiatives. For instance India could: (1) establish a Think Tank that can serve as an institutional memory to the nation creating/updating IPR repository, (2) introduce a second tier patent protection (such as utility models) in the patent system, (3) put in place policies and laws under which companies reward employees who create and share successful inventions and (4) institute Indian Intellectual Property Service cadre (IIPS) like we have IAS, IRS etc. to bring out pool of IPR savvy professionals. Following these and other initiatives India could achieve its full potential in the market place, for the benefit of its economy and society. India is all set to follow the path of knowledge economy with right set of initiatives being taken by ruling Government Dr. Sheetal Chopra
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