In early November, we had reported that an IPR think tank has been constituted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to advise the Government on patent issues and to draft a national IPR policy for India; the think tank constitutes the following persons: Prathiba Singh, senior advocate; Punita Bhargava, advocate, Inventure IP; Unnat Pandit, Cadila Pharmaceuticals; Rajeev Srinivasan, director, Asian school of business; and Narendra Sabharwal, retired DDG, WIPO. The panel would be headed by Justice Prabha Sridevan, a former judge (Madras High Court) and former chairperson of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB).
In pursuance of the proposed draft policy to be framed by the think tank, the Government, vide a notice dated 13th November, has invited comments from the public on the proposed draft IPR policy.
All comments are to be emailed to [email protected] by 30th November, 2014.
H/T: We would like to thank Ms. Jeena for bringing the DIPP notification to our attention.
Is there a policy outline as yet? I believe that any exercise in providing comments on a non-existent draft policy document would be an exercise in futility. I may be wrong, but suspect that this is the first time the Government has asked for public comments without providing a framework/talking points/outline for discussion.
Indeed Sir. It doesn’t make sense to invite comments for a policy, where there is no draft policy available for reference. I do not think that a draft policy is out yet.
Comments are invited with a deadline ( positively 30.11.2014) to the Draft IPR Policy, which is NOT publicly available 🙂 :):)
We have submitted our observations to the think tank. These observations have been published at http://frontierindia.net/ip-imperatives-for-indian-entities. We are not sure whether the think tank will really appreciate our concerns and enable itself to do something.