Thomson Reuters India Innovation Awards 2015

Thomson Reuters India Innovation Awards honors the most innovative academic institutions and commercial enterprises headquartered in India. The list of award winners and the top 50 Indian innovators is provided below.

Winners of India Innovation Awards 2015

Corporate Hi-Tech: Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., TATA Steel

Corporate Pharmaceuticals:  Lupin Limited, Cadila Healthcare

Academic and Research Institutes: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Department of Atomic Energy.

Highlights from the report.

• The volume of patents public funded institute hover around 1000 whereas from corporate sector it is 3 times higher.
• Major focus of govt funded research was on medicinal preparation with focus on traditional herbal medicine. A number of patents were also filed in organic chemistry related to acrylic compounds.
• corporate sector also patented  on medicinal preparation though  focus was on preparation of organic active ingredients and preparation of ointments.

It can only be said that India is far behind China in patenting. 

China received more patent application than USA and Japan combined- WIPO

Year 2015 report on IP metrics was released by WIPO. Highlights:

•  Around 2.68 million patent applications were filed worldwide in 2014. Indian Patent Office received 42,824 patent applications, 12,040 from India, 9,824 from USA, 5338 from Japan, 3,174 from Germany and only 880 from China. PCT applications not originating from India number 26,340.China tops the list with nearly a million applications, 80% from residents and mostly utility patent applications. India's patent position is higher than Russia, UK, France, Australia and near that of Germany.
•  USPTO tops in patent grants with 3 lakh, India grants 6,153, mostly (5433) from non-residents. There are over 2 lakh patent applications pending in India compared to a million in USPTO.
• Of the top 10 origins in the period 2011-13, Switzerland filed mainly in pharmaceuticals; the Russian Federation in food chemistry; France and Germany in transport; China, Japan and the Republic of Korea in electrical machinery; the Netherlands in medical technology; and the UK and the US in computer technology. Majority of applications in India are in Pharma and Computer technology.
• An estimated 948,900 applications for utility patents were filed worldwide in 2014, of which 868,511 were received by SIPO. Resident applications made up 98% of all applications filed worldwide in 2014, showing that utility model applications are rarely filed abroad. Compared to patents, the Czech Republic, China Hong Kong (SAR), the Philippines, Slovakia and Ukraine are intense users of utility models.

CSIR- Dehradun Declaration

DEHRADUN DECLARATION’ has been adopted at the end of two day conference of CSIR Directors held at CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum in Dehradun. Highlights:

•  CSIR labs will develop technologies for National missions like Swachh Bharat, Swasth Bharat, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Namami Ganga. 
• Each laboratory would also develop at least one technology in strategic sector for India. 
• (CSIR) to come up with at least 12 cutting edge technologies which are to be commercialized every year.

Fair Standards Alliance- friend of FRAND

A group of companies which include global firms such as BMW, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel and Lenovo launched the Fair Standards Alliance this week in Brussels, aimed at ensuring licensing of standard-essential patents is done on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The support revision made by IEEE. On the critical issue of Royalty on SEP, they state:
(a) Fair and reasonable royalties for a SEP must not tax features of a product that are unrelated to the patented invention 
Some SEP holders suggest that licensing rates should be based on downstream uses of standardised technology. Licensing polices that seek to charge such rates are unfair – they violate the FRAND commitment because they seek compensation for unpatented technologies or technologies that the patent holder did not invent or create. For example, when a smartphone has an innovative user interface that helps drive consumer demand for that device, the owner of a patent essential to a cellular standard should not be permitted to use that patent to appropriate any portion of the value of the user interface. Instead, in most circumstances, FRAND licensing rates should be determined with reference to the device, or the part of the device, that implements the patented invention; this ensures that the patent holder obtains fair compensation for what it actually invented, and not compensation for the value of others’ work or contributions. In other words, the price of a brick should be independent of whether that brick is used for building a garage or a mansion – and the royalty for a SEP associated with a standard that enables an Internet of Things (IoT) device to be wirelessly connected to other IoT devices (or the cloud) should be independent of whether that first IoT device is a smart watch, a refrigerator or a car. That is why it is so important to not blindly base royalty rates for SEPs on the overall value of an end device that makes use of the SEP’s invention, but to rather carefully consider the actual value that the SEP contributes to that end device. Often, that assessment can greatly be aided by considering the smallest component that actually implements the patented invention. When that part can be isolated as a separately saleable unit (a brick for building various types of buildings), a fair royalty rate will typically bear a relation to the price of that unit. 

Report of the Expert Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship: August 2015, NITI Aayog, New Delhi

Recommendations:
1. Introducing Competitions to Solve Pressing Economic and Social Problems:
The committee recommends a “ Grand Prizes” approach to finding ultra-low-cost solutions to India’ s most intractable problems on the lines of X Prize. Each challenge should carry a prize of between Rs. 10 cr and Rs. 30 cr for achieving a significant precisely-defined target over a precisely defined target over a precisely defined time horizon. The committee recommends spending entire  AIM budget of Rs 150 crores in this way.
(my comment: Amount is significant. Product development to meet challenge needs permission to use part of grant to buy Patents) 
2. Harnessing Corporate Funds to Finance R&D
All contracts with foreign defence companies above $5B should include a clause for 5% of contract value to be directed to establish research centric universities with strong emphasis on its core product areas in particular and broadly focused on the related areas in general.
(my comment: to be seen how this recommendation is accepted by Ministry of Defence)
3.SETU Funds Should Be Used to Upgrade Incubators and Set-UpTinkering Labs
Budget allocated Rs. 1000 crores for Self Employed and Talent Utilization (SETU).  The SETU funds should be used to jumpstart innovation through two concrete initiatives at scale. Committee recommended Rs 500 crores to be given to 10 existing incubators and balance Rs 500 crores to set up Tinkering Labs.
(My comment: Hopefully ten incubators would also include those that support Hardware Startups. I suppose setting up Tinkering Labs would be by UGC)

And many more recommendations: Inability to prioritize is a perennial  problem and this committee followed the best Indian practice of satisfying all stakeholders with a recommendation or two. 
Why Secretary, DSIR is left out of the Board of AIM??

Climate Smart Agriculture- ecourses from World bank

Several E-courses are offered by World bank to understand more about Climate Smart agriculture.
Read: World Bank

ETSI Vs IEEE on Standard Essential Patents (SEP)

IEEE  updated its SEP policy, introduced Smallest Saleable Unit (SSU) policy for determining a reasonable royalty rate in a licensing deal. Patent owners did not like it. Now, Standards-setting organisation the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) has said that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) intellectual property rights policy is incompatible with its own.
Different Standard Setting Organisations, ETSI, ITU, IEEE have varying influences on royalty on FRAND  terms. 
Read: Perkins primer