Monday, January 14, 2008

UTILITY PATENTS “Good for India or Not”

For TRIPS compliance, it is not essential for India to introduce the “Utility Models of Patents”. These categories of “Minor innovation patents” with limited requirements of patentability are considered to be ideal for protection of small innovations made by rural population, amateur inventors and students. Many of such inventions are popular with the consumers. Such “Utility Models of Patent”, popularly known earlier as “Petty Patents” are not available to Companies and Corporates. Introduction of “Utility Models of Patent” could help kindle a spirit of innovation amongst thousands of small innovators and enterprising students. This will also encourage creativity generally in the minds of the people of India. In short, the innovation spirit which is expected to be the duty of every citizen of India under Part IV A, Article 51 (A)(h) of the Constitution of India (Directive Principles) will get a boost by introduction of “Utility Models of Patent”.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear friends,
Please offer your comments and suggestions for or against freely.
Any alternate model may also be proposed.

Varun Chhonkar said...

It would not be a great idea to think about Utility Model in India because of two reasons.

First, Indian Government is already not able to put patent system in place, having no clear guidelines and interpretations for provisions provided in the Patents Act, 1970 and importantly miserably failing to tackle enforcement issues. Then why to bring one more system? Just to add more problems.

Second, intellectual property system is needed for a society which value incremental contribution, invest in innovation and research, and importantly respect others intellectual property (until and unless you do not respect IP, you will never create IP). IP is not for society where companies wait to imitate/copy others intellectual property that also without acknowledging. If incremental is so trivial, why Indian companies not able to capitalize on even incremental platform? Even here they wait others to do homework, so to copy without hassle.

We need a good and effective IP system, not hypocrite system.