The reported decision of the government to split the royalty from publicly funded research projects between the researchers, the institution and the government in the new Protection and Utilisation of Publicly Funded Intellectual Property Bill, which is to be reintroduced in the monsoon session of Parliament, is a welcome step that can help accelerate the pace of innovations and encourage patenting. This is especially so since publicly funded R&D, through universities, institutions engaged in research and government organisations, accounts for almost three-quarters of the R&D spending in the country. A major complaint that has arisen in recent years is that commercialisation of research from these institutions has been hindered by the lack of incentives for the individual researcher, as intellectual property rights originating from publicly funded research were bestowed on the institutions or on the government. The new Bill will hopefully bring in a more appropriate legislative framework that will encourage greater commercialisation of publicly funded research. The potential is large, as patenting is still not a very common activity among Indian researchers, neither in the institutions of higher learning nor in government-funded institutions. The sceptics? fear that such incentives would spur research in the wrong direction by shifting focus from fundamental research to more commercially viable projects is unfounded, given that the global experience shows no such major shift. Moreover, the financial incentives provided by some of the leading research institutions like the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research , Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the IITs have led to some improvement in their workings.
But merely improving the incentive framework alone cannot help improve the targeted levels of innovation activity. Faculty innovation in higher institutions is influenced by a number of factors apart from the incentive structure. Closer investigation shows that some of the main drivers of patenting among Indian researchers include exposure to global practices and closer interaction with industry, both of which remain severely constrained in the current scenario. This can change only when individual institutions embark on large scale exchange programmes, both with industry and also with institutions abroad. Innovation can also be encouraged by giving added weights for innovation in performance evaluations, another major drawback that has yet to be tackled. The country can also take some valuable lessons from the successful research programmes of foreign companies that have invested large funds to tap the full potential of the skilled manpower in the country.