Thursday, March 15, 2007

Anna University, Coimbatore to create record number of patents

"I want to create a record for Anna University, Coimbatore, by filing the maximum number of patents in the next three years,'' said Vice-Chancellor R. Radhakrishnan.

Mr. Radhakrishnan told that awareness about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in the country was very negligible. In Japan there were 2,884 patents being filed for every million people as against India's mere seven.

Awareness

Dr. Radhakrishnan said that the Union Government was being funded by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), an organisation promoting the protection of intellectual property, for creating awareness on IPR in the industry.

"It is saddening to note that there is very low awareness. There are so many innovations being made by entrepreneurs, industry people and even by students; but only a negligible per cent gets patented. The reasons, besides lack of awareness, are the cumbersome procedures involved in patenting a product or a concept and the cost involved," he added.

To ease the procedure, Dr. Radhakrishnan, with the help of his dedicated team of professionals, would provide the service of applying for patenting under the aegis of the Centre for IP Rights that would be set up soon.

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