National IP Award 2016

"IIT Kharagpur Awarded Prize for 'Top Academic Institute for Patents 2016' by Government of India -- Our "100 Patents Drive" Efforts are now giving Results. Congratulations to all, especially the Core Team. Let us keep up the Tempo and do it all over again!" 

 ~Prof. Partha P. Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur 

As per the recent communications received from Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks and also, Executive Director, Confederation of Indian Industry, IIT Kharagpur has been selected as a winner for the National Intellectual Property (IP) Awards in the category of "Top Indian Academic institution for Patents". 

Director, IIT Kharagpur will receive this award on 26th April, 2016, World IP Day, from Hon'ble Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India, at a function jointly organized by the Indian Intellectual Property Office and Confederation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (CII). The National IP Award carries an amount of Rs. 1,00,000/-, a citation and a memento. 

In 2014, there was no winner declared in this category. In 2015, IIT Bombay came as winner.

Update of 10-04-2016: The following are some of the media coverage on this news.

NDTV, Economic Times, Business Standard, The Hindu, The Statesman, Outlook India, Sify News, Times of India

IPR Round Table

In a new study initiated by IPR Office, IIT Kharagpur in the current year, feasibility of a new model of IP prosecution system is debated that can fast-track enforcement of IP with reduction of time and steps. IP is time-stamped and the protection is available for a finite period only. A slow trial on IP litigation is costly on various counts. This raises concerns for innovators without deep-pocket like that from academia and also for those who wants certainty of outcome in a finite time to go for IP based investment in our country. This feasibility study project is funded by UK Intellectual Patent Office (IPO). The idea of this study came when IIT Kharagpur IPR team had an interaction with UK IPO team members on 2nd June, 2015 at British Deputy High Commission, Kolkta. 

The first round table on this study took place on April 02, 106 at Conference Room of IIT Khragpur Kolkata Extension Centre. It was attrended by Hon'ble Justice Prabha Sridevan, Former Judge Madras High court and Chairman IPAB; Dr. V.C. Vivekanandan, MHRD IPR Chair Professor, NALSAR University of Law; Prof. V.K. Unni, Associate Professor at the Public Policy and Management Group of IIM Calcutta; Mr. S. Majumder, Partner, S. Majumder& Co. Leading IP attorney; Mr. .K.Chakraborty, Partner, MKC & Associate Leading IP attorney; Mr. Gautam Banerjee, Principal Associate Khaitan& Co. IP attorney; Mr. Sudipta Ghosh, Head-IP Management, Wipro Technologies Ltd; Mr. Pranay Agarwal, Consultant - Intellectual Property Rights & Consulting Attorney for Commonwealth at Longbow Legal Services; Mr. Debrabata Das, IP Maangement Team, CTS; Representative from CMERI; faculty and research students of IIT Kharagpur. Opinions of experts who could not attend the round table physically are made available through emails. 

The half-day round table showed emergence of three alternative approaches - one of which requires major intervention for which process appears to be complicated, second one requires minor intervention but still is an intervention and the third is having certain structural and functional changes in the existing system for which the process may not be as complicated. We are on our way to consolidate the thoughts and ideas of the discussion.