Universities and patents

he ambitious goal set by India’s IPR Policy rests on how universities embrace patents

Universities and patents benefit each other. Patents help universities to improve their ranking, establish an innovation ecosystem, incubate knowledge-based start-ups, earn additional revenue and measure research activity. In its biggest push to create entrepreneurial universities, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has now asked all universities in India to set up Intellectual Property (IP) Centres. As universities line up to set up these centres, they will face a strange human resources problem: despite the policy push to have more IP, we simply do not have enough IP professionals in the country.

The dearth of IP professionals is a problem related to the field of intellectual property itself. Its recent rise to prominence in the international arena, thanks to various international treaties and trade agreements, alongwith with the legal-centric approach where law schools and colleges are the only institutions which mandate teaching these subjects, are reasons why the supply of IP professionals is not keeping pace with demand. But there is a great opportunity now that should not be missed. The Central government conducts the only competitive examination in the country to check a person’s proficiency in IP. Fine-tuning the patent agent examination to cater to the growing IP needs of the country can be a successful way to build a band of professionals and create career opportunities.

Patent exam

On October 28, the Central government conducted the competitive examination to test proficiency in patent law, a type of intellectual property right (IPR), after a hiatus of two years. Any Indian citizen with a bachelor’s degree in science or technology can take the examination. Upon clearing it the person is entitled to practise before the Patent Office as a registered patent agent. Qualifying the exam allows science graduates to draft, file and procure patents from the Patent Office on behalf of inventors.

India witnessed significant changes in IPRs since the introduction of the National IPR Policy in 2016. The grants rates at the Patent Office have increased: in 2017-2018, there was a 32% increase in the number of patents granted compared to the earlier year. The Patent Office increased its workforce with the inclusion of 459 new examiners and is on the lookout for more. The timeline for filing responses to official objections for patents has been reduced by half. While the disposal rate has increased, the filing rate for patents has not changed significantly. In 2016-17, the Patent Office reported a dip of 3.2% in filing compared to the previous financial year.

Centres in universities

The new policy has pushed universities to file more patents. Kindled by the call to have more IPRs, the higher education sector has witnessed many reforms. The UGC’s call to universities, highlighted earlier, has come after a series of policy directives to introduce awareness about IP in higher educational institutions.

The number of patents applied for, granted and commercialised by universities and institutes is factored in in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings: no surprise that the top ranked engineering institutes in India are also the leading filers of patents. Whether a higher educational institute has an innovation ecosystem could also have a bearing, with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, awarding up to 24 points to an institute which sets up an innovation ecosystem and has a facility for identifying and promoting IPRs. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) model curriculum for its member institutions lays emphasis on the need for IPR education in technical institutes.

As the IPR Chair at IIT Madras, I was part of a committee constituted to draft the IPR guidelines for institutions under the AICTE. The lack of IP professionals to teach IP was one of the reasons the committee could not suggest the mandatory introduction of IP courses in all technical institutes. Online courses on IPR are available on the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning platform. Though thousands register every year, much needs to be done to build capacity on IP in universities. We need to focus on careers rather than courses.

India has a poor patent agent density, with only about 2,000 registered patent agents currently in practice. The last time when the Patent Office conducted the patent agent exam, in 2016, around 2,600 candidates took it, a paltry number if one looks at the ambitious goals set by the IPR Policy. Despite the infrequent manner in which the examination has been conducted, the private sector does give good weightage to the examination as it is considered to be the de facto IP qualification today.

Way ahead

The ambitious goal set by India’s IPR Policy will be realised only when the examination becomes the foundation for making a career in IPR. In a dynamic field such as intellectual property, in order to create a band of qualified IP professionals there should be a push towards post-qualification continuous education as well. To achieve this, the format, membership, syllabus and the frequency of the patent agent examination will need to be addressed. This will not only increase the number and quality of IP professionals in the country but also become a new career choice for graduates with a degree in science and technology.

Feroz Ali is the DIPP-IPR Chair Professor at IIT Madras and the chief mentor at www.lexcampus.in, a platform to train aspiring patent agents

Source: The Hindu, 31/10/2018

Past perfect and a future tense

Legitimising suspect ‘traditional knowledge’ and passing it off as proven wisdom is perilous.

The things All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) wishes to formally teach engineering students in the name of ancient Indian scientific achievements is a gross insult to ancient India. Making unsubstantiated claims about the past detracts from the genuine contributions that were actually made, and brings ridicule to an otherwise respected discipline.

AICTE is an apex body set up by the HRD ministry for the promotion of quality in technical education. The Delhi centre of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is offering, through its website, a post-matric course on “essence of Indian knowledge tradition”, and a post-graduate diploma in “Indian knowledge tradition: Scientific and holistic”. To serve as a text for these courses, a book titled Bharatiya Vidya Saar has been prepared.

AICTE, no doubt guided by HRD ministry, has co-opted this programme and decided to offer a credit course based on the Vidya Saar — meaning that students will be formally examined in it and assigned grades.

The proposed textbook is not freely available. Whatever excerpts have been published makes for disturbing reading. Students will be told that “In Vedic age, ‘Maharshi Bhardwaj wrote an epic called Yantra Sarvasva and aeronautics is a part of the epic. This was 5,000 years before Wright brothers’ invention of the plane… Yantra Sarvasva is not available now but out of whatever we know about it, we can believe that planes were a reality in Vedic age.”

A number of questions arise immediately. How do we know that Yantra Sarvasva existed? If it discusses aeronautics, what is the actual term used? If the text does not exist anymore, which are the works that have preserved the extracts? Details should be provided so that readers can decide for themselves how much credence is to be placed on such claims. In the same fashion, it is claimed that Maharishi Agastya in Agastya Sanhita talks about the discovery of electricity and invention of batteries.

Students should, no doubt, be made aware of ancient Indian science. We cannot, however, ask students to switch off their mental faculties when they are being instructed in the essence of Indian learning, but bring their intellect into full use an hour later when the regular curriculum is taught.

In recent years, a flourishing industry has sprung up which takes stray passages from ancient texts and relates them to modern scientific and technological discoveries.

In 2002, B G Matapurkar, a surgeon at the Maulana Azad Medical College Delhi, claimed that the Mahabharata description of the Kauravas’ birth proved that “they not only knew about test-tube babies and embryo splitting, but also had the technology to grow human foetuses outside the body of a woman — something unknown to modern science”. If the learned surgeon had taken the trouble of reading the original description (given in Adi Parva, Chapter 14) he would not have been so rash.

Gandhari could not possibly have given natural birth to 100 sons. One is inclined to believe that 100 was not meant as an exact number but as a poetic exaggeration. The Mahabharata tells us that Gandhari was pregnant for two years after which she delivered a piece of flesh which was as hard as iron. It was irrigated with cold water and split into 100 thumb-sized portions. These portions in turn were placed in pitchers filled with ghee which were carefully kept at secret places. After another two years, each pitcher produced a boy. A small piece of the aborted flesh was still left from which, after a month, a daughter was born. Immediately on birth, the first born, later to be known as Duryodhana, started braying like a donkey whereupon, the “other” donkeys, vultures, jackals and crows in the area also joined the chorus. Here is an attempt to take Duryodhana’s villainy back to his birth itself; any resemblance to modern research is purely incidental. It is extraordinary that the creativity and imaginativeness of ancient poets and dramatists should be sacrificed at the altar of modern science.

In October 2016, the PM, while inaugurating a hospital in Mumbai, claimed that the Hindu god Ganesha’s having an elephant head showed that plastic [?] surgery began in India. He also speculated that genetic science must have been known in ancient India because the Mahabharata says that Karna was born outside the mother’s womb. The Mahabharata also says that virgin Kunti’s motherhood was due to her recitation of a mantra and that, fearful of the public opinion, she clandestinely set the newborn afloat in a river. What use is a scientific discovery if it has to be presented as a miracle and hidden from the public at large? More recently, the newly-elected Chief Minister of Tripura concluded that internet existed in the age of Mahabharata, because Sanjaya narrates the happenings in the war-field to Dhritarashtra who is located miles away.

Such dubious claims have been made by persons in power or in inaugural addresses, etc. But, alarmingly, the government has now decided to give such claims the legitimacy of a teachable subject, and that too, at the level of professional colleges.

By definition, science today is better than science yesterday. It is, therefore, anachronistic to pit one against the other. Production of wealth today depends on modern science. Prosperity in ancient India depended on agriculture and un-organised manufacturing activity — knowledge systems connected with these two spheres were exclusively the domain of farmers and artisans and there was no reason for sacred Sanskrit texts to incorporate this parallel knowledge system into their own. In other words, it makes no sense to look for products of modern technology in ancient sacred texts.

AICTE should put its present proposal on hold for the time being. It should ask Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan to heavily annotate its textbook so that a reader can check the veracity of the claims made. The draft text should be uploaded online, and comments invited on its content. The textbook should be finalised in the light of the feedback received. Only then should it be placed in the hands of teachers and students. The proposal, as it stands now, is an insult to human intelligence and aimed at the “moroni-fication” of the students.

Rajesh Kochhar is with the mathematics department, Panjab University.

Source: Indian Express, 31/10/2018

TISS report ‘not hostile’ to Dhangar demand: CM

Says the state govt will send ‘appropriate’ reccomendations to the Centre based on it

The report submitted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) with regard to the Dhangar community’s pitch for a scheduled tribe (ST) status is “not hostile to the demand”, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said. Fadnavis said the state government would make “appropriate” recommendations to the Centre based on the report, which he added, is being currently studied. He said the report mentions several aspects which strengthen the case of the Dhangars. He, however, did not divulge details of the report. Dhangars are currently included in the Vimukt Jati nomadic tribe category, but they have been demanding the ST status for long. The chief minister also said his government expected the State Backward Class Commission to submit its report in connection with the Maratha community’s demand for quota in jobs and education by November 15. The Marathas form 30 per cent of the state’s population, and the Dhangars nine per cent. On the Dhangar community’s demand, Fadnavis said a call would have to be taken by the Centre and not the state government. On the Maratha community’s demand, he said the government “will act per timeline”. MMB

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 31/10/2018

What Lies Beneath

When we look, we look at the surface. When we see, we see in depth. By moving from surface cares to authentic cares, we attain a pure heart. We live in an age of looking. But to see is to go beyond the surface of things. That takes us to a deeper level of concern and deeper level of caring. Faith for many is equated with sight. Not physical sight, but internal sight. To see is also to believe or to walk by faith. Seeing is also closely linked with seeking. When our seeking is true, we see the Truth. When our seeking is false, we flee from the Truth and all that really brings us face-to-face with the Truth. That is why some people seek and never find. To set one’s hopes in what is passing and impermanent is also to look at things only on the surface. The more we chase the tangible, the more the intangible slips through our fingers, which is why ‘seeing’ is an important part of a real conversion of heart. We can train our sight to look at merely externals or to look deeper and beneath. Vision is like a laser that removes the cataract that obstructs sight. When Jesus said, “Look at the lilies in the field, they neither toil or spin, but even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these”, he was drawing our attention to real sight. He called us to see the universe and us as protected by the mantle of God. If we begin to see, we will seek and find. God who is invisible cannot be experienced by those who only look but can be experienced by those who ‘see’ in all things not appearances, the miracle of life

Source: Economic Times, 31/10/2018

Humans wiped out 60% of wildlife since 1970

Rate Of Species Loss Up 100-1,000 Times From Few Centuries Ago

Unbridled consumption has decimated global wildlife, triggered a mass extinction and exhausted Earth’s capacity to accommodate humanity’s expanding appetites, the conservation group WWF warned on Tuesday. From 1970 to 2014, 60% of all animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — were wiped out by human activity, according to WWF’s “Living Planet” report, based on an ongoing survey of more than 4,000 species spread over 16,700 populations across the globe. “The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse,” WWF International director general Marco Lambertini said. “The only good news is that we know exactly what is happening.” For freshwater fauna, the decline in population over the 44 years monitored was a staggering 80%. Regionally, Latin America was hit hardest, seeing a nearly 90% loss of wildlife over the same period. Depending on which of Earth’s lifeforms are included, the current rate of species loss is 100 to 1,000 times higher than only a few hundred years ago, when people began to alter Earth’s chemistry and crowd other creatures out of existence. Wild animals today only account for 4% of mammals on Earth, with humans (36%) and livestock (60%) making up the rest. Ten thousand years ago that ratio was reversed. Back-to-back marine heatwaves have already wiped out up to half of the globe’s shallow-water reefs, which support a quarter of all marine life. Even if humanity manages to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius — mission impossible — coral mortality will likely be 70 to 90%. The onslaught of hunting, shrinking habitat, pollution, illegal trade and climate change — all caused by humans — has been too much to overcome, he said. In looking for answers, conservationists are turning to climate change. “We need a new global deal for nature,” said Lambertini, noting two key ingredients in the 195-nation Paris climate treaty. “One was the realisation that climate change was dangerous for the economy and society, not just polar bears,” he said. Similarly, threatened ecosystem services long taken for granted are worth tens of trillions of dollars every year. “A healthy, sustainable future for all is only possible on a planet where nature thrives,” said Lambertini. AF

Source: Times of India, 31/10/2018

Rising pollution could hit monsoon rains: UN report

Rising air pollution in India is likely to impact rainfall patterns in the country and decrease monsoon in long term, which can cause extensive financial losses, warns a United Nations report released on Tuesday. “Air Pollution in Asia and the Pacific: Science-based Solutions” presents a scientific assessment of air pollution in Asia and the Pacific. Released in the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) first global conference on air pollution and health in Geneva, the report covers various pollution aspects which India is grappling with. The largest impact of air pollution on the Indian monsoon will be a decrease in the amount of rainfall, the report warns. “However, some parts can also witness high precipitation depending on the topography. Pollution will also impact the duration and distribution of rainfall,” said Nathan BorgfordParnell, science affairs adviser at Climate and Clean Air Coalition who coauthored the report. The report states that the presence of particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5), a deadly tiny pollutant, can affect precipitation patterns during monsoon in India. “A weaker trend in the Indian monsoon precipitation has been linked to changes in the emissions of particles and other pollutants from within and outside Asia,” the report says. The report also has a word of praise for several mitigation measures taken by the government. Recognising indoor air pollution as a major health crisis in India, the report reveals that it is contributing as much as 22-52% to the country’s ambient air pollution. Speaking exclusively to TOI, Andy Haines, member of the scientific advisory panel of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, said from Geneva, “The muchneeded mitigation measure that India needs to ensure is provision of clean household energy. Burning of fossil fuels in households is a big health threat, especially for women and children.” UN claims that if the suggested measures are implemented, annual premature mortality associated with indoor air pollution can decline by 75%. This means that about 2 million premature deaths per year can be avoided in countries like India. The economic development data of 41 countries (in Asia and the Pacific) shows that unlike many other nations who managed to control air pollution with economic development, India’s air quality got worse with an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). A graph shows as India transitioned from a lowincome to a middle-income country between 1995 and 2014, levels of PM 2.5 increased significantly. Haines added that growing air pollution was affecting the country’s health care, with an increase in ailments like heart attack, cancer and other respiratory diseases.

Source: Times of India, 31/10/2018

 Javadekar launches web portals for research-oriented schemes

Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Thursday launched web portals of two schemes — IMPRESS and SPARC — with an aim to build a research ecosystem in educational institutions.

"A country achieves prosperity on a sustainable basis only through innovation which can happen only by good research and which is currently a major focus area of the Government," Javadekar said while addressing a press conference.

The objective of Impactful Policy Research in Social Sciences (IMPRESS) is to identify and fund research proposals in social sciences with maximum impact on the governance and society. "It will provide an opportunity for social science researchers in any institution in the country which includes all universities (central and state) and also a few private institutions meeting the requirement," he said.

The scheme will be implemented at a total cost of Rs 414 crore till March, 2021. Under IMPRESS, 1,500 research projects will be awarded for two years to support social science research in the higher educational institutions.

The Indian Council of Social Science and Research (ICSSR) will be the project implementing agency. Meanwhile, the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) aims at building the research ecosystem of India's higher educational institutions by facilitating academic and research collaborations between Indian and foreign institutions.

"It is a scheme for promotion of academic and research collaboration. Under the scheme we are giving Rs 418 crore for 600 joint research proposals. The idea is to stop brain drain and provide facility so that they can do research in India which is of international level," said Javadekar.

IIT-Khargapur is the national coordinating institute to implement the SPARC programme. The research work under both the schemes would start from January next year, the minister said.

Source | The Daily Pioneer | 26^th October 2018