Govt to step up IPR enforcement with toolkit for Police
Stepping up the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) nationwide, the government is planning to arm police forces with a ‘knowledge toolkit’ to quickly identify and prosecute IPR violations.
The cell for IPR promotion and management under the commerce and industry ministry has prepared the toolkit, which is in the form of a booklet, which can be used as a ready reckoner for police forces across the country.
“Currently, police forces don’t know how to handle IPR violations with the official curriculum only giving cursory knowledge of such issues,” said DIPP joint secretary Rajiv Aggarwal. As a result, while the government has strengthened norms on the policy front, a serious gap exists regarding on the ground oversight.
The booklet focuses on IPR crimes, specifically in the areas of trade marks counterfeiting and copyrights piracy. In addition to details of offences under various laws, it provides for checklists for registering a complaint and conducting search and seizures. While the government has provided the material to seven batches of Andhra Pradesh Police, it has also trained a team of the Uttar Pradesh Police at Moradabad.
Patent filings from Indian applicants have gone up by nearly 1.75 per cent in the April-November 2016 period, compared to the same period from the year before. However, total filings have fallen by 5.82 per cent owing to foreign applications dampening due to global economic slowdown.
The national IPR policy was approved by the Cabinet last May aiming to strengthen the IPR regime as well as to improve available infrastructure to generate higher levels of intellectual property.
The policy is based on seven broad objectives such as increasing IPR outreach and awareness, speeding up the approval process, incentivising the public through greater commercialisation and effective enforcement of norms.
The government had reached out to state governments to formulate their own IPR policies but the exercise was slow. Currently, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu account for the highest percentage of patents being filed.
The highly uneven distribution of intellectual property-related legal cases in the country is also an issue. “Most IPR cases are registered in metro cities such as Mumbai and Delhi, with far fewer number of cases in other parts,” said Nishad Nandkarni, associate partner at law firm Khaitan and Co.
On the global front, India continues to be pressurised by developed countries, especially the US, on specific provisions in patent laws. Chief among this is Section 3(d) of the Patents Act, which stops ‘evergreening’ of patents.