Source: Naushad Forbes ndforbes@forbesmarshall.com Co-Chairman Forbes Marshall, Past President CII, Chairman of Centre for Technology Innovation and Economic Research and Ananta Aspen Centre. His book, The Struggle and the Promise has been published by HarperCollins. (Published in Business Standard dated 19th September 2024)
Technology imports are an indication of technology diffusion and technology absorption capability. Like Indis's R&D spending, the figures on technology imports do not tell the full story.
CTIER HandbookCTIER Handbook: Technology and Innovation in India 2023 is comprehensive with the above limitations.
From the report:
Based on firm level data5 available for industry, the figure above shows a steady increase for technology payments (that includes royalty and technical fees)6 between 2017-18 and 2020-21. India’s total technology payments on the other hand as reported by the RBI has seen a steady increase over the same period.7 There has been a drop in the number of firms over the five years for whom technology payments data is available. It is unclear whether the difference between the industry level data and the aggregate data has been entirely due to unavailability of firm level data. Currently, a breakdown of RBI’s technology payments data by industry is unavailable. Furthermore, it is also difficult to discern from the aggregate level data how much of the payments were towards patented technologies by higher technology or knowledge intensive firms and how much of it may have been towards payments for copyrights and trademarks.
Global innovators of Indian origin
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Read the thought-provoking article by Michael Park1 , Erin Leahey2 & Russell J. Funk.
Abstract:
Theories of scientifc and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes1,2 , wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton’s words, ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’3–7 . Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientifc and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances8,9 . Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major felds10,11. Here, we analyse these claims at scale across six decades, using data on 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents from six large-scale datasets, together with a new quantitative metric—the CD index12—that characterizes how papers and patents change networks of citations in science and technology. We fnd that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across felds and is robust across multiple diferent citation- and text-based metrics1,13–17. Subsequently, we link this decline in disruptiveness to a narrowing in the use of previous knowledge, allowing us to reconcile the patterns we observe with the ‘shoulders of giants’ view. We fnd that the observed declines are unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or feld-specifc factors. Overall, our results suggest that slowing rates of disruption may refect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology.
The Law Commission (LC) recently released its report no. 289- “Trade Secret and Economic Espionage”. (Part 1, Part 2and Part 3). SpiceIP has posted on this , some points:
The LC report noted the failure of attempts to get companies to voluntarily license TS during COVID-19. As a result, it proposed a separate section in the Protection of Trade Secrets Act, 2024 (‘Draft Bill’) for CL of TS. Certain key features of the provision are-
The LC has sought to balance the public interest with the interest of a licensor by narrowly construing ‘disclosure’ to mean disclosure only to a third party under strict obligations of confidentiality. It does not mandate public disclosure of the TS since the commercial value of the information derives from its secrecy.
