National Research Development Corporation, Kalam Institute of Health Technology, a Government of India project located at the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) and Novel IPR Academy have joined hands to improve the rank of the State in intellectual property rights (IPR).

Telangana has secured the fifth rank while Maharashtra occupies the top rank followed by Karnataka. While World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) conducts the global ranking, the assessment in India is done by Intellectual Property Rights Office. At present, Andhra Pradesh is at the 10th position and the aim is to take it to the top position in the next three to five years.

KIHT Executive Director Jitendra Kumar Sharma told The Hindu that to achieve the mission, they had tied up with the IPR Academy, a CSR arm of Novel Patent Services Pvt. Ltd to offer various courses and hand-hold the startups to achieve patents for their ideas as well as devices and components developed by them to promote the innovation culture.

The AMTZ is developing Indias first comprehensive medical devices manufacturing park in 270 acres at Nadupuru near Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, with an aim of bringing down the healthcare cost by 40 to 60% through import substitution.

Special courses

The Novel IPR Academy has already opened its office at AMTZ and evolved the syllabus for conducting courses with durations of one day to six months to train the laymen and professionals as well on IPR.

In the WIPO rankings, India has secured the 57th position. China tops the chart with 6.60 lakh IPs followed by the U.S.A. (5.25 lakh), while India has secured only 40,000 to 45,000 patents thus far, NRDC Chairman and Managing Director H. Purushotham explained.

With 13 years of experience in Intellectual Property Rights and 65 full-time engineers on the payroll and most of the clientèle from the abroad, the city-based Novel Patent Services Private Limited has decided to spread awareness on IP through its non-profit arm Novel IPR Academy, its managing director Himabindu Atti said.

Boot camps

We want to update the developments in the world of IP to the academia regularly. In a bid to bring about a dramatic change in the innovation landscape, we want to conduct boot camps in colleges and conduct an innovation challenge to award the best three ideas every year in connection with celebration of World IP Day (April 26) to stimulate innovation and creativity, Ms. Himabindu added.