India's surge in the patent file is a problem of defective innovation

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. A surge in patent applications does not mean that India has become innovative worldwide; Few universities have succeeded in earning their patents consistently. (IStockphoto) Summary India’s patent commands have risen, but rising numbers mask a worrying reality: Most patents show little innovation, with a limited market impact. Many look like marketing stunts. Worthy inventions take much more than marking legal boxes to be eligible for intellectual property protection. How we analyze statistics on Indian patents often do not provide the right perspective, which should include research quality, commercial potential, global competitiveness and other important parameters, which are not reflected in patent data. Data from the Indian Patent Office show that patent filing in India rose from about 40,000 in 2013 to about 60,000 in 2023, mainly driven by Indian entities increasing their contribution from 20% from the total to 60%. The Indian patent office improved its throughput, with the average time it took to give an approval of eight years in 2013 to less than one by 2023. Total growth in patent was mainly led by educational institutions, which was from 20% of all files in 2013 to about 42% in 2023. The submission by individual inventors also showed a large increase, while the share of businesses dropped from 40% to below 20%. To get a patent, an invention must meet the criteria to own novelty, have an resourceful step (to exclude simple changes of existing technology) and to be industrial use (with a practical application). Only these criteria are met by serious researchers who solve commercially relevant problems that require considerable spending on research and development (R&D), including capital equipment, salaries and benefits for those involved. There is no evidence that the R&D expenses have risen from the university or that universities have become more effective in research over the past decade, a period during which they doubled their part of the patent filing. Consider this: Lovely professional university submitted 1,418 patents in 2023-24, before the IIT’s (1,106) and Nits (417). By comparison, the largest number of patents received by an American university in 2024 was 540 (for the entire University of California). MIT was next with 295 patents, while other top universities such as Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan were each under 200. Patents are not subject to blind peer reviews or critical reviews by experts, a process followed by academic publications. There is no measure of intrinsic quality, impact or scientific merit. Since the legal test is all that needs to be met, an increase in the submission does not have to reflect a wave of sincere innovation. Many readers can remember that they have seen advertising from private universities that highlighted their patent counts and research rankings. Over the past decade, the National Institutional Framework (NIRF) has been used to determine such ranks. The formula contains patent data. The rise of this formula has created an incentive for universities to submit patent applications for publicity purposes with the quality of underlying research, often just a minor consideration. Submitting a patent application in India is cheap and at least some universities seem to use it to improve their rankings. Another indication of this is the lack of success of Indian universities in generating licensing income from their patents, despite their dedicated intellectual property (IP) cells and legal support units. The core mission of universities is to teach and investigate. Ideally, with appropriate links with the industry, their patent -protected technological advances should lead to commercial products, and part of these earnings should return to them as royalties. Worldwide, few universities have succeeded in earning their patents consistently. In the US, university researchers have formed strong ties with the industry. Know-How transfers take place through faculty consultation agreements, students from University Labs who join the R&D divisions of US enterprises and professionals between the academy and the industry. This is a major reason why leading American universities have relatively low patent counts, while their academic publications tend to have an impact. In India, it is worrying that patent submission by companies is declining in terms of both their share and absolute numbers, even as total patent assignments rise. Perhaps this is not a surprise, as Indian businesses spend little on the insous R&D. Over the past decade, Startups have raised billions of dollars in India, but very little of it has led to IP-worthy research, as seen in the patent data. A further indication of our poor innovation scenario is the low number of global patents that arise in India, although legitimate protection in the US, Europe and Japan, which has developed patent ecosystems -or a filing under the Patent Cooperation Treaty that can help prevent the submission in various signing jurisdictions. These patents cost more, but the low score of Indian entities with global patents showing that we are a long way from global competitive innovation, regardless of a high local patent count. The government’s efforts to raise staff from the patent office, train examiners and streamline processes have improved the process efficiency. However, it would be a mistake to confuse this and other state-led efforts-as India’s national intellectual property rights, Atal Innovation Mission and Kapilate with “an innovation-friendly environment” that encourages innovators to think and protect their ideas. The true test of innovation is a thriving IP ecosystem of commercially successful innovative products made possible by patents and an active patent licensing market to deal with reliable enforcement and global entities that consider India as a key patent submission. Unfortunately, India fails on all this. The authors are a researcher and a research analyst in the high-tech geopolytic program at the Takshashila institution respectively. Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #indian Economy #intelectual Property Appeal Board #Academic Research Read next story