In the attempt to catalogue grassroots innovation the NIF has come across “A television set that can be viewed from all the four sides, a fishingrod that gives off an alarm when a fish bites the bait, a bullock cartwith brakes and a cycle made of wood.” These and other creations are soon going to be launched as commercial products.
“NIF, whose main task is to scout for such innovations across ruralIndia and secure intellectual property rights for them, has so faridentified 70,000 innovations across the country and about 900 inBengal alone.It is now trying to find mentors who would help the villagers convertthe ideas and products into commercially viable projects.According to Gupta, executive vice-chairman of NIF, “Our main job isto tour states throughout the year, often on foot, sharing ourscientific knowledge with villagers and sniffing out that hiddeninnovation in a place that may not have a road, electricity or school,
but has a thinking mind.”
The NIF has 5 crore from SIDBI as an innovation fund and is trying to involve the West Bengal goverment in the process of commercialization.
Ip trial in India
I was brought to the notice that in Japan trial is not very fast and to make it expeditious , they are taking some steps like- recruiting more judges at district level or at original side. Their plea was that if we don’t give protection to ip products then we might be hampering our economy as all the companies have the intellectual properties and we should give impetus to their effort.
To my astonishment, in Japan trail time for IP cases take around 2 years and they want to bring it to 1 year.
My submission is that when trail in Japan just takes three years they are thinking of improving it. But, I am quite amazed and saddened to find that neither the IP enforcers in India nor the regulatory authorities are conscious of this fact that in India it generally takes more than 7 years to complete the trials of ip cases. I firmly believe that in India to be good enforcer of Ip issues, we must expedite trial of ip cases and at the same time, we should make the offences in copyright as compoundable so that ip owners can get some compensation in the terms of settlement.
I am looking forward to receive the view points on this issue from other contributors to spicy.