India Innovation Challenge 2016

This contest is jointly conducted by Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) and Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) with support from the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The theme of the contest, in keeping with the start-up buoyancy, is “Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Nation building”. The contest is targeted specifically at encouraging the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst student engineers.
TI together with the DST and IIMB has designed the contest this year to attract the finest minds among student engineers with the best ideas that can quickly evolve into successful start-up companies. The objective is to provide them early stage access to business expertise and nurturing, which are important for a good start-up to go-to-market rapidly.  This year the contest aims to catalyze the Indian manufacturing ecosystem and strengthen the ‘Make in India’ initiative by enabling radical new innovations, trends and young engineering talent.

Important Dates

August 31, 2016	Submission of proposals
September 30, 2016	Announcement of short-list teams
January 31, 2017	Submission of Project Report and Video Demo
March 1, 2017	Announcement of Semi-finalists
March, 2017	Semifinals
April 15, 2017	Announcement of finalists
June, 2017	Finals

Standard Essential Patents and Antitrust regulator in China

Now that Indian regulatory authority has got free hand to investigate abuse of monopoly position by SEP holder, Chinese success in this line needs to be highlighted.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is the Chinese competition authority charged with investigating price-related conduct that is anticompetitive, such as cartels, “resale price maintenance” (RPM), and abuses of dominance. The NDRC investigated Qualcomm’s standard-essential patents (SEPs) for certain telecommunication standards and its licensing practices on the basis of complaints filed.  The NDRC formally started its investigation in November 2013 when several dozen NDRC officials raided Qualcomm’s offices in China.  There followed multiple rounds of submissions, intense hearings and negotiations between Qualcomm representatives, NDRC officials, as well as many other interested parties. Qualcomm was found to have abused its dominant position in three ways: excessive pricing, unfair terms, and bundling. The NDRC found that Qualcomm charged unreasonable royalties on Chinese mobile device manufacturers.  This finding is actually split into several claims.  First, Qualcomm refused to provide customers with a list of all patents included in its comprehensive licensing package, resulting in customers being charged for patents that had already expired.  Second, Qualcomm imposed unfair cross-licensing conditions: it forced customers to grant Qualcomm free licenses for their own patents whilst refusing to lower the royalties it imposed in consideration of the value of the patents licensed to it.  Third, the royalty rate was set at a high level and applied to the net wholesale price of the mobile devices concerned. The NDRC also found that Qualcomm forced customers to accept the licensing of Qualcomm’s non-essential patents (for which Qualcomm possibly holds no dominant position) in order to obtain a license for its SEPs. 
On 10 February 2015, China fined Qualcomm CNY6.08 billion (approx. USD975m or EUR870m) for abusive patent licensing practices and imposed several remedies on the company. 
The payoff to China continues. Now, Chip maker Qualcomm has agreed a licensing deal with Zhuhai Ewpe Information Technology in China related to 3G and 4G patents. Under the terms of the agreement, Qualcomm has granted Zhuhai a royalty-bearing licence to develop, manufacture and sell subscriber units covering 3G WCDMA and CDMA2000, and 4G LTE for use in China.

Qualcomm agreed to offer separate licences to certain patents, with licensees whose phones use 4G technology paying a 3.5% royalty rate and those whose handsets incorporate 3G paying 5%.

DeitY patents

Center of Excellences in IP through setups at DeitY and CDAC, Pune  provide a gamut of value added IPR related services to various stakeholders including those from R&D community and academic fraternity. A very significant service being prior art searches.  To complement the services offered by search Centres, Patent Analysis Management System (PAMS) portal (www.ict-ipr.in) is in operation for the last 5 years. The portal offers intellectual property related services especially targeting SMEs, Startups and academia focusing on ICT sector as well as disseminates knowledge related to IPR issues and services. 

For Prior-art search in ICT is provided free of charge. Registration essential.
List of Patents generated from DeitY funded projects can be downloaded. 48 patents listed. 

Global Biopharma Innovation- ranking

ITIF released a new report ranking nations on bio-pharma innovations. The parameters chosen are:
1. Government R&D as percentage of GDP.
2. Drug price control.
3. Data exclusivity.

With these parameters the ranking about India is obvious- at the bottom. But there will be more global innovations coming from India than those ranked higher,

• the R&D investment in India is significantly higher than most others in terms of productivity of R&D investment in India. If  cumulative R&D man-hours is an indicator India's rank would b much higher. 
• Relationship between price control of essential drugs , mostly generic versions and innovation is not academically established.
• Data exclusivity is a perfectly justifiable revenue maximization effort of commercial firms, but there is weak link between data exclusivity benefits of commercial firms and source of innovation- public R&D.   

International Exhibition of Economic and Scientific Innovations INTARG ,14th to 15th June 2016 , Katowice, Poland.

Indian Innovators are invited to International Exhibition of Economic and Scientific Innovations INTARG which will take place from 14th to 15th June 2016 in Katowice, Poland. 

Please send the application to intarg@haller.pl . You can also visit website where you will find all necessary information http://intarg.haller.pl/o-targach,i118,j1.html

You can also see a short movie of the previous edition of INTARG 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDASQmrxTak .

For assistance, Indian Innovators can also contact Indian Innovators Association.

Standard Essential Patents and Monopoly position.

When a patented technology is incorporated in a standard, adoption of the standard eliminates alternative to the patented technology. Ericsson has taken Indian assemblers of smart phones to court for their refusal to pay royalty for SEP (Standard Essential Patents). Phone manufacturers complained of unreasonable demands by the SEP owner both on royalty rate and base unit for enforcing royalty. FRAND terms for SEP are under debate in USA and Europe. IEEE and manufacturers have taken different positions on this.

China is said to have reduced the royalty rates on SEP by bringing in their Competitive commission. Indian manufacturers also approached Competitive Commission of India and as expected SEP owners did not like it and questioned CCI role in patent infringement.

Now Delhi High Court ruled that  that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) can continue its investigation into Ericsson’s alleged anti competitive practices. 

“In my view, there is no irreconcilable repugnancy or conflict between the Competition Act and the Patents Act. And, in absence of any irreconcilable conflict between the two legislations, the jurisdiction of CCI to entertain complaints for abuse of dominance in respect of Patent rights cannot be ousted.”

"
More from SpicyIP

Startup India action plan

The most important feature of action plan is about BUSINESS. 
Relaxed Norms of Public Procurement for Startups.

Objective To provide an equal platform to Startups (in the manufacturing sector) vis-à-vis the experienced entrepreneurs/ companies in public procurement.

 

Details Typically, whenever a tender is floated by a Government entity or by a PSU, very often the eligibility condition specifies either “prior experience” or “prior turnover”. Such a stipulation prohibits/ impedes Startups from participating in such tenders. At present, effective April 1, 2015 Central Government, State Government and PSUs have to mandatorily procure at least 20% from the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME). In order to promote Startups, Government shall exempt Startups (in the manufacturing sector) from the criteria of “prior experience/ turnover” without any relaxation in quality standards or technical parameters. The Startups will also have to demonstrate requisite capability to execute the project as per the requirements and should have their own manufacturing facility in India. 

Creation of Common Research and Technology Development Hubs (CRTDHs)

Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) has initiated a programme aimed at setting up of Common Research and Technology Development Hubs (CRTDHs) to encourage research and technology development activities by Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs). Partial financial support would be provided as grant-in-aid for development of infrastructure and equipment to facilitate MSEs undertake new/improved product/process development and skill enhancement activities. Proposals are invited from National laboratories, Public funded bodies or Institutions having a distinct legal entity for setting up of CRTDHs in the following three sectors: 

1. Electronics/Renewable Energy 
2. Low Cost Machining 
3. New Materials / Chemical Process 

The prescribed guidelines and application formats are available on the DSIR website: www.dsir.gov.in. The proposal is to be submitted in the prescribed format in a soft copy, along with all annexure and enclosures, formats as MS Word/PDF file before 22-04-2016 to: Shri G.M. Bagai Head and Scientist ‘G’, Hall-B, Room No. 6, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Technology Bhavan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi – 110 016 Phone: 011 – 26602185, 26590382, E.mail: gbagai@nic.in

Opportunity for Indian Innovators to sell their innovations in Global Market

Step 1- Browse the web site of General inventions. https://www.generalinventions.net/

Step 2- Write to - indiainventsatgmaildotcom  about your patent/ innovation.

Step 3- Analyse the preliminary report prepared by General Inventions India team .

Step 4- Take a decision to sell patent and/or innovation.

Step 5- Get on board..

Book Review: Indian Innovators by Akshat Agrawal

Author Akshat Agrawal is a product of IIT Delhi and currently Director at Alpha Beta Classes, a startup in Education domain. This is a story of 20 Indian Innovators written in simple narrative form with no pretension of discovering any unique Indian innovation methodology. The innovators covered are:

Anirudha Sharma formed a team in the first year of engineering at RTU, worked on touch user interface technology and received first bout of appreciation when their team `Team Sparsh’ won first prize in Hardware Design competition at BITS Pilani. The spark came to Hemanth Satyanarayana while doing MS at SUNY, Buffalo after graduation from IITM. He developed `Trail room using Augmented Reaity’, a technology that lets you try clothes digitally without having to wear them. More familiar to me is long journey of Mrinmayee Bhushan who successfully developed, patented and commercialized Romantaque, hair growth inhibitor. Met the 3Nethra team of professionals at CIIE for Piramal awards and very comfortable to interact with a startup team not composed of teens. MittiCool innovator Mansukhbhai was a celebrity among grass root innovators scouted and supported by National Innovation Foundation (NIF). Met many of them at Anil Gupta’s workshop in Ahmedabad. TePP supported many innovators like Artin Dynmics incubated at Technopark, Trivendrum. Chandrasekhar Nair managed the most successful TePP Outreach Center. Research spin-offs are a rarity in India and Dr Nitin Joshi stands out for pursuing research on nanoparticle based targeted drug delivery into an innovation. Anirudha Sharma and Prateek Bumb started their entrepreneurial journey with a business plan for technology to capture CO2 from industrial flue gas at IDEAS 2008 , became part of Indian Youth Delegation to COP15 by 2009. India Innovation Initiative (i3) inspired many innovators like Priyanka Sharma, inventor of disposable plastic biochip, Pratik Mahapatra who developed a process to kae paper from weeds growing unchecked in lakes. Sachidanand Swami from IITD working on touch tables is waiting for the big break. Sriram Kannan working on location tracking without GPS, Abjijit Joshi developing implantable biosensor for diabetes monitoring, Ganesh interacting with virtual 3D objects, Ahmad Khan constructing roads plastic waste. DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programm also supported many innovators like CareMother. Stanford Biodesign Fellowshop program led  innovators like Chinmay Deothar to develop and license laproscopic sugerey instrument to US firm. Arunachalam with development of low cost sanitary pad making machine created opened a huge market for a consumer product. Startup Village has many success stories and Innoz of Deepak Ravindran is one such a one. Prof Amarnath at IITB groomed many startups and Ankit Mehta of IdeaForge is one such a story.

The Innovators need to be celebrated as builders of new India, designing products for make In India. The organizations that supported these innovators at early stage also need a brief mention and for that reason I highlighted the small but significant role played by govt funding agencies and mentors.

INVENTECO EXPO, Republic of San Marino - ( Italy) 15-19 May 2016

INVENTECO EXPO aim is to put in touch inventors from East Europe, Asia and Africa with the inventors of the Mediterranean countries.  The Expo will be held on 2016 from the 16th to the 18th of May included, ( on the 15th participants will set up their stands and on the 19rth they will dismantle them). The Republic of San Marino has granted its high sponsorship  since its Government is strongly interested in promoting and supporting  intellectual property  and will  assure to  all the participants the maximum international visibility and prominence since many politicians  and business man will attend and all media, consequently and  will give great cover to this international  event.

Contact:

President A.N.D.I.

avv. Vincenzo Falcucci

info@andi-inventori.com

www.andi-inventori.com

Ms.  Anna Lisa Ciavatta   http://www.sanmarinoreservation.com/inventeco/  

Indian Innovators Association will support Indian Innovators in participation.

Andhra Entrepreneurs- Past, Present and Future

Link to Slide share http://www.slideshare.net/indiainvents/andhra-entrepreneurs-feb-2016

INPEX Invention Show, June 7-9 at the Monroeville Convention Center near Pittsburgh, USA.

Indian Innovators are invited to participate in the 31st Annual show of INPEX.  The focus is on helping inventors, entrepreneurs, and intellectual property owners to potentially learn, market, network and gain exposure with companies seeking new products. INPEX showcases all types of new products, inventions, and technologies available to business and industry.

In addition to networking with companies that may be interested in your products, all inventions on display at INPEX are eligible to be judged by the INPEX International Jury. Prizes include medals, trophies and cash prizes. This is the opportunity for you to showcase your research product in the US market, and have your products judged as a part of our International Awards Program.

INPEX is member of IFIA and Indian Innovators Association can assist Indian Innovators in particpation, business meet etc.

Contact: 

Tiffany Ng

International Marketing Associate

INPEX-The Invention Show

217 9th Street

Pittsburgh, PA  15222

tng@inpex.com

+1(412) 288-1343 x4169 (Phone)

+1(412) 288-4546 (Fax)

Dr A.S.Rao

President

Indian Innovators Association

indiainvents@gmail.com

C L E A N O V A T O R S -Outstanding projects from the Global Cleantech Innovation Programme - India

The Global Cleantech Innovation Programme (GCIP) for SMEs is a global multi-stakeholder partnership that leverages the power of innovation and entrepreneurship to address the world’s most urgent energy, environment and economic challenges. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) with support provided by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is currently implementing the GCIP in seven countries namely Armenia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. GCIP India was launched in May 2013 as a partnership between the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME), GEF and UNIDO, with the Federtion of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) as main executing partners. The Programme aims at creating an ecosystem of clean technology innovations in the MSME sector to catalyze low carbon industrial growth in the country. 
This book is a handy resource for those looking for a bird’s eye view of the breadth and range of clean technology innovations currently being fostered by the GCIP in four crucial areas: energy efficiency, waste-to-energy, renewable energy and water efficiency.
Download the eBook. 

Funding Database c​reated by Venture Center team

For details see: http://funding.venturecenter.co.in/

Project Profiles for starting small scale industry

smallB.in is SIDBI’s attempt to inspire all individuals to look at the business opportunities all around and to demystify and simplify the process of starting a business in India. One of the resource is Project Profile-
Project profiles provide basic information on the product, machinery required, source of availability of men and machinery, raw material and profit margin etc.

They can be accesses here.

New Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions (CRIs)

In August 2015 Indian Patent Office Patent Office released guidelines for CRIs and these were opposed by iSPIRIT and others. In Feb 2016 Patent office came out with revised guidelines.
The main Difference:
1. August 2015 guidelines has illustrated examples of claims which are patentable, where as Feb 2016 guidelines completely dropped the list.
2. The August guidelines carry a checklist on what is not excluded under section 3(k) of the patent act taking a liberal view of technical contribution. The February guidelines restated the known position leaving it to interpretation of examiner.

While there is no ambiguity of computer program, which is not patentable in India, the ambiguity is about combined software and hardware invention.When the technical contribution is on a process which is carried on outside computer, patents were allowed. Expanding the non-exclusive list to computer programmes making the computer a better computer is opposed and dropped.

The Scheme for Facilitating Start-ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP)

The Scheme of SIPP aims to promote awareness and adoption of Intellectual Property Rights amongst Start-Ups. Scheme is inclined to nurture and mentor innovative and emerging technologies among Start-ups and assist them in protecting and commercializing Intellectual Property Rights by providing them access to high-quality IP services and resources. For the purpose of facilitating the Start-ups and giving them assistance while getting their Intellectual Property registered in India, the Controller General of Patents, Design and Trademarks (CGPDTM) also appoints a panel of Facilitators. 

The Facilitators would perform the below mentioned functions-

• Providing general and basic advice to the Start-ups with respect to different Intellectual Properties.
• Providing information regarding protecting and promoting IPRs in different countries.
• Providing assistance and guidance in filing the applications for registration of Intellectual Properties like Trademarks, Patents and Designs and disposal of the same at the Indian Offices under the CGPDTM.
• Drafting Specifications, Claims, response to Examination Reports/Queries etc.
• Attending hearing on behalf of Start-ups.
• Contesting third-party Oppositions.
• Ensuring disposal of the IPR applications.

The Facilitators are not allowed to charge anything from the Start-ups for the services provided by them. Further, the Facilitators will be provided with a fixed amount of fee by the Central Government and it will not be entitled to charge any amount apart from that to the Entrepreneur.

The facilitator would get Rs 15,000/- at the time of filing, another 15,000/- at the time of final disposal.

Source: mondaq

INVENT ARENA 16-18 June 2016, Trinec, Czech Republic

Indian Innovators are invited to participate in the first annual of the International Exhibition of Technical Innovations, Patents and Inventions-  INVENT ARENA - in Trinec, Czech Republic scheduled from 16th to 18th June 2016. The best exhibits in each category will be awarded with gold, silver and bronze medals. The international jury will be evaluate inventions in following categories:
1. Ecology and environmental protection
2. Metallurgy, power supply, mechanical engineering, transport and civil engineering
3. Chemistry, agriculture, health care and biotechnology
4. Computer engineering, telecommunication, automation and informatics
5. Young innovators (up to 26 years)
6. Miscellaneous

Details: http://www.inventarena.cz/en/

Contact: Jan Kobielusz, Chairman of the INVENT ARENA organizing committee, INVENT ARENA <invitation@inventarena.cz>

The 8th Edition of EUROINVENT - European Exhibition of Creativity and Innovation

Indian Innovators invited to participate in EUROINVENT 2016,at  Iasi, Romania, May 19^th-21^st, 2016, Palas Mall -Atrium Hall. The exhibition promotes creativity and innovation in international context.The last edition showed over 400 inventions and projects, being the largest in Eastern Europe .
Details: http://www.euroinvent.org/
Contact :
Prof.Dr.Eng. Andrei Victor SANDU, EUROINVENT Coordinator 

euroinvent@yahoo.com, +40-745438604

Prof.Dr. Kamel EARAR, earar_dr.kamel@yahoo.com