Defense Reserach labd in India offer patents - royalty free

The Indian Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) has formulated a new policy that allows the Organization to offer complete access to its patents filed in India without any licensing or royalty fees.  According to the notification, an application for licensing must be made through the DRDO website and a processing fee of INR 1000/- must be deposited. The Applicant is also required to disclose its financial and technical capabilities in a comprehensive manner, along with the application. All applications will undergo a screening process to determine whether the applicant has met the eligibility requirements and has provided all the required information. On completion of the same, a non-exclusive license will be granted for a period of 1 year. The Licensee is obligated to furnish details to DRDO, every year, regarding Working of Patents – Form 27. On completion of one year, the license can be renewed without incurring any additional costs. DRDO’s patent portfolio primarily consists of inventions related to missile technology, aeronautics, naval systems, life sciences, armaments, combat engineering, electronics and communication material.

List of patents.

knowledge is global but innovation is local

Knowledge creation is spreading to more and more countries. For most of the period from 1970 to 2000 only three countries – the United States (U.S.), Japan and Germany accounted for two thirds of all patenting activity worldwide. When the remaining Western European economies are included the share reached some 90 percent. But in the years since, the rest of the world has come from almost nowhere to account for almost one third of all patenting activity. Published scientific data have spread even more widely, with the rest of the world going from less than a quarter of all such publication to around half over the last 20 years.

China and the Republic of Korea are largely responsible for the rising share of new areas in knowledge production and innovation: they account for over 20 percent of patents registered in the years 2015–2017, compared to under 3 percent in 1990–1999. Other countries, notably Australia, Canada, India and Israel, have also contributed to the global spread of innovation. Many middle-income countries, however, and all lower-income countries continue to have substantially lower levels of patenting activity.

Innovation is geographically concentrated in a limited number of areas. The emerging landscape of global hotspots and niche clusters shows that inventive and scientific activity within each country is persistently concentrated in a few large, cosmopolitan and prosperous urban areas. In the U.S., hotspots around New York, San Francisco and Boston accumulated roughly a quarter of all U.S. patents filed from 2011 to 2015. In China, those around Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen increased their share from 36 percent to 52 percent of all Chinese patents during the same period.

Less than 19 percent of all inventive and scientific output worldwide is generated by inventors or researchers located outside hotspots and niche clusters. Despite the big change in the global innovation picture, more than 160 countries – the vast majority – still generate little innovation activity and do not host any hotspot or niche cluster.

Source: WIPO report 2019.

International Innovation fair (IIIF 2019)

IIIF 2019 brings  largest confluence of Innovators, Entrepreneurs, Start ups from all across the globe.

Why India is reluctant to sign RCEP?

India seemed to have pulled out of RCEP. Regional comprehensive Partnership Agreement (RCEP) is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between 10 ASEAN countries and their six FTA partners, namely Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. It accounts for 25% of global GDP, 30% of global trade, 26% of FDI flows and 45% of the total population. From India’s point of view RCEP is critical. RCEP countries account for almost 27% of India’s total trade. Exports to RCEP account for about 15% of India’s total exports and imports from RCEP comprise 35% of India’s total imports. India runs a trade deficit with ASEAN as well as the partner countries of RCEP. India’s trade deficit with the bloc has risen from $9 billion in FY05 to $83 billion in FY17, of which China alone accounts for over 60% of the deficit. The primary reason is India's limited success with FTAs.

India’s experience with FTAs

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become increasingly prevalent since the early 1990s. RTAs cover more than half of international trade and operate alongside global multilateral agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO). The first eleven years (1995-2005) of the WTO were paralleled by a tripling of RTAs from 58 to 188. Currently, 455 RTAs are in force globally. India is one among top countries in Asia with the maximum number of FTAs either in operation or under negotiation or proposed. According to the Asian Development Bank Institute, as of now, India has 42 trade agreements (including preferential agreements) either in effect or signed or under negotiation or proposed. Out of this, 13 are in effect, one is signed but not yet implemented, 16 under negotiation and 12 are proposed/under consultation or study. Most of India’s existing FTAs are with Asian countries which are quite different from each other in terms of the level of their economic development. The major FTAs that India has signed and implemented so far include South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), India-ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and India-Japan CEPA.

Indian exports to SAFTA countries have increased faster than its imports from them leading to a significant rise in trade surplus with these economies from about US$ 4 billion to US$ 21 billion. The maximum growth in exports to SAFTA region has been recorded with Bangladesh and Nepal. contrary to India-SAFTA trade India’s imports from ASEAN has increased at a significantly higher rate than Indian exports to ASEAN. Another important point worth to be noted is that the imports from ASEAN grew much faster than India’s imports from the world. The faster growth in imports has resulted in a significant increase in India’s trade deficit with ASEAN from less than US$ 8 billion in 2009-10 to about US$ 22 billion in 2018-19. With CEPA, India’s trade deficit with Korea from US$ 5 billion in 2009-10 to US$ 12 billion 2018-19. As in the case of ASEAN and Korea, India’s trade deficit with Japan has not only increased during2011-12 to 2018-19 but grown faster than India’s trade deficit with the world.

India seems to have underutilised its existing FTAs. The percentage of India’s international trade routed through the preferential route/FTAs is very low. According to the Asian Development Bank, the utilisation rate of India’s FTAs varies between 5% and 25%, which is one of the lowest in Asia. Moreover, exports to FTA partner countries and non-partner countries have grown at the same pace. Complex rules of origin criteria, lack of information on FTAs, higher compliance costs and administrative delays dissuade exporters from using preferential routes. The compliance cost of availing benefits under these FTAs is so high that exporters prefer using the normal route. India has actively pursued FTAs with several major trading partners in the past without benefitting much.

NITI AAYOG recommendation

Before getting into any multilateral trade deal india should

·        firstly, review and assess its existing FTAs in terms of benefits to various stakeholders like industry and consumers, trade complementarities and changing trade patterns in the past decade.

·        Second, negotiating bilateral FTAs with countries where trade complementarities and margin of prefeence is high may benefit India in the long run.

·        Third, higher compliance costs nullify the benefits of margin of preference, thus reducing compliance cost and administrative delays is extremely critical to increase utilisation rate of FTAs.

·        Fourth, proper safety and quality standards should be set to avoid dumping of lower quality hazardous goods into the Indian market.

·        Fifth, circumvention of rules of origin should be strictly dealt with by the authorities. In case of India- SriLanka FTA, Srilanka had started exporting copper to India by under invoicing of imported scrap to in order to show higher value addition for qualifying for preferential rates under the FTA. Thus, Rules of Origin (ROO) norms can easily be circumvented by simple accounting manipulation to flood Indian markets.The over-arching conclusion of this report is that FTAs have to be signed keeping two things in mind, mutually reciprocal terms and focusing on products and services with maximum export potential.