India will have to decide whether it wants to get serious about R&D by taking IPR seriously

Abstract

On April 26, we will celebrate World Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Day as marked by the World Intellectual Property Organisation. As the global economy slows down and India’s economic hopes rise, it’s time to reflect where we are with respect to the IPR environment.

In a theoretical world, IPR should aid in the development of a country’s endogenous capabilities in domestic innovation and manufacturing. So, it should drive long-term economic growth. It would be instructive here to assess this using a focused lens on India’s cellular phone market, one of the fastest growing in the world.

Do Indian domestic firms contribute at all in terms of patents and technology in India’s vast phone market? Unfortunately, the answer is a no. A sizeable volume of mobile phones that are being consumed in the country are only assembled in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have recognised this fallacy when he initiated the ‘Design in India’ initiative so that Indian manufacturers can move up the value chain and create IPRs as China has done. This is important as higher local value-add would mitigate outflow of precious foreign exchange, increasing exponentially due to import of electronic equipment and services (also foreign IPR) — an expense that is likely to surpass the oil import bill by 2020 (estimated at $400 billion). Read more at: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/et-commentary/india-will-have-to-decide-whether-it-wants-to-get-serious-about-rd-by-taking-ipr-seriously/