Asia IP

With the calendar quickly running out, Amitabh Kant, India’s Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion Secretary, has again said that the government is likely to come out with a new national intellectual property rights policy by the end of December.

Speaking in early December at a conference in New Delhi, Kant said that the task force appointed by the government has submitted its report. The likelihood of a new IPR policy was first raised in October, when a leaked final draft of the National IPR Policy circulated widely and Kant announced that the policy would be released in the next two months.

“India in the next two months will be coming out with a completely new and one of the finest IPR policies in the world,” he said at an IndoGerman Business Roundtable in New Delhi in October. India’s Economic Times newspaper reported that his remark was in response to a German company’s comment that India’s IP regime “hampers growth” of their company in India.)

Indian blogs focussing on intellectual property and pharmaceuticals have theorized that the national IP policy is in response to recent pressure from the United States – possibly at the behest of the country’s pharmaceuticals industry – and the signing of the TransPacific Partnership.

“It’s not just the last year and a half” that India’s intellectual property regime has been developing, notes Mukul Baveja, an IP counsel at Phoenix Legal in Mumbai. “IP has been developing in India for the past seven or eight years, but the Modi government has us in the right direction. Their message is that your IP will be protected in this country.”

Ranjan Narula, managing partner at RNA, IP Attorneys, in Gurgaon says that the new IP policy that the news suggests has been submitted “are all part of a number of macro- and microlevel changes we’ve seen.”

Outside India, there is a belief that Indians don’t respect IP, says Bisman Kaur, a consultant at Remfry & Sagar in Gurgaon.

“But it’s not that Indians don’t respect IP, it’s more an issue of that people can’t afford it,” she says. “We have to come to some kind of middle ground. I don’t think the government will accede to what the West wants. Indian IP policy will keep its own people in mind.”

The draft policy released in October and has been widely circulated on the internet and elsewhere, aims to encourage innovation in the country by providing tax incentives and changing intellectual property rights. Further details released in December indicate that the policy will be called “Creative India, Innovative India,” and will include a campaign to support business innovation and promote awareness of the “economic, social and cultural benefits” of intellectual property rights for India.

Both local and international media have reported that policy features in the new IP policy include the proposed securitization of intellectual property, along with an IP trading platform for investors and IP portfolio owners.

The policy also suggests it will make it easier to raise funds for developing intellectual property assets through banks, venture capital and crowdfunding mechanisms.

The Spicy IP Blog, researched and written by IP scholars, noted that the content of Kant’s announcement is problematic. “There are two possibilities here, one more grim than the other,” the blog’s authors wrote. “In the first case, Kant’s remark could have been intended to appease the German industry rep’s concern, and meant nothing. If so, this would simply be the latest in a long line of empty noises made by the government on its IP policy. The other, more alarming possibility is that Kant actually meant what he said, and that we will be getting a “completely new” policy come December. There seems to be nothing fundamentally wrong with India’s existing IP policy in the first place, and even if there is, policy overhauls aren’t supposed to take place with such minimal consultation and public participation.”