India Inc should look at practical implications of IPR: Expert

Indian corporates should look at the commercial angle in the intellectual property rights (IPR) involved in their products and processes, feels Rodney D Ryder, a leading IPR legal practitioner, author and member of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

“We need to look at the commercial aspect; we have historically been very good at looking at the intellectual aspect of IPR, we need to understand the practical implications of IPR too,” said Ryder at a CII-MSME sensitisation programme on IPR here on Thursday.

Intellectual property has the power to catapult small and insignificant companies into global giants. Companies like Microsoft and Nokia, even though they did not give the world earth-shattering technology, had, using their IPRs, done phenomenal business so far.

Ryder has urged Indian corporates to look for such opportunities.

“They created and negotiated them and ensured they got the best value for their intellectual property, be it copyrights or IPRs,” said the author of Business Process Outsourcing, Data Protection & Information Security.

Citing Japan as the intellectual powerhouse, Ryder said this was because the country had a close system of monitoring and reporting whatever new was happening to their various products and processes.

“When you are negotiating, it is important to understand the value of your intellectual property,” Ryder added. For exmple, British author JK Rowling, the creator of Harry Porter, had negotiated hard and incorporated her own terms before granting movie rights of her books to Warner Brothers.

Speaking on the occasion, VN Choudhary, assistant director of Jharkhand MSME, said the state MSMEs needed to take the advantage of the Centre?s assistance in publicising IPRs.

Choudhary said MSMEs should disburse Rs 1 lakh of the Centre?s aid for conducting sensitisation programme on IPRs, Rs 2.5 lakh for conducting pilot study of selected clusters of industries, Rs 2 lakh for interactive seminars and Rs 6 lakh and Rs 45 lakh respectively for holding short and long term specialised training on IPR.