50,000 patent application filing in India

Pharma & Healthcare IPR Summit 2019 : Challenges & Opportunities

Newswave @ Noida

AMITY  Institute of Pharmacy (AIP) of Amity University Uttar Pradesh (AUUP) has organized ‘Pharma & Healthcare IPR Summit 2019: Challenges & Opportunities’ on September 27, 2019. The purpose of organizing Pharma & Healthcare IPR Summit at Amity University was explained by Dr. Amrish Chandra, Professor of AIP and Joint Organizing Secretary of IPR summit 2019. Prof. (Dr.) Balvinder Shukla, Vice Chancellor of AUUP has given details regarding how Amity University is fostering the culture of innovation into its students. She also provided information about the incubation center of the Amity University.

Amity University filing 130-170 patent applications

Special address was given by Ms. Sangeeta Nagar, Scientist F, TIFAC, DST, New Delhi . She has praised the R&D activities of Amity University and also told that Amity University is maintaining its position in the top 5 universities in the India by filing around 130-170 patent applications in a year. She also said that Amity University’s numbers of patent applications filings are many times more than the total number of patent filings by all IITs together.

50,000 patent application filing

Guest of Honour  Mr.B. P. Singh, Joint Controller of Patents & Designs, New Delhi also highlighted that Indian patent office has taken many initiatives, like modernization & Digitization of the IPR system and recruiting large number of patent examiners , for reducing the patent examination time period.  He also informed that number of patent application filing in India is around 50,000, which was target set by the Government of India in 2005-06.

Chief Guest Mr. Sanjeev K. Varshney, Scientist G, DST, Govt. of India, also address the importance of pharma& healthcare sector and its relation with the Intellectual Property Rights. He also encourage students to be more proactive and learn more from the events like this IPR summit. Vote of Thanks was given by Dr. Tanveer Naved, Joint Head, AIP. Mrs. Renu Bala of SS Rana associates has provided the basics of intellectual property rights. She also explained the detail about the various criteria of patentability.

Dr. Dinesh Kumar, General Manager and Head IPR, Jubilant Generics explained the importance of IP compliance in pharmaceutical industry. He has also nicely given details of various stages of drug development. Dr. Dinesh also touched upon the Ever-greening concept of Patents used by multinational drug manufacturer to hold market share for longer time.

GoI promoting IPR in the Country

Dr. Paresh kumar C. Dave, Founder & MD of IP Moment Services, New Delhi  has spoken about the Indian Government’s various initiatives for promoting intellectual property rights in the country. Dr. Dave has briefly discussed the various international treaties signed by the Indian Government and National IPR policy given by the government in 2016. He also provided details of various steps taken by the government in last three years for implementing National IPR policy.

Dr. Paresh also shared some valuable information on recently published draft –’National Innovation and Startup Policy 2019 for students and faculty of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ by Ministry of Human Resources Development of GoI. In this draft, main highlighted points are –

• Student entrepreneurs will also be allowed to sit for exams even if they are below permissible minimum attendance;
• Students and Faculty will also be allowed semester and year break to work in the startups and then re-join the programme;
• The academic institutes can also take 2% to 9.5% equity stake in the company;
• A minimum of one percent of the institution’s budget is to be allocated to nurturing businesses on-campus.

He also gave the details on different program and initiatives taken by the various government departments. Dr. Paresh also shared details of the The Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2019 and recent proposal of Ministry of Commerce & Industry for reducing official fees for MSMEs.

Dr. Dave has praised the Indian government for taking many steps for spreading IPR awareness and also increasing the IPR filings in India. However, he has raised serious concern on lack of strong and detailed IPR enforcement policy in India. He said that government has to do lot for making stronger IPR enforcement laws and implementing it.

Dr. Dave  also shared some steps taken by the GoI, which are discouraging or not acceptable by the industries. Such steps are – “Licensing and Formats for Genetically Modified Technology Agreement Guidelines, 2016”; Announcement of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) byway of a notification removed the requirement for companies to inform whether a drug is under patent or not at the time of filing for a manufacturing license, Placing several pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices under price control and Lack of clear guidelines for Software patenting.Dr. Dave finally concluded his speech by giving advised to young generation that they have to learn how to respect IPRs of the others.