The central government is planning to facilitate the international registration of trademarks under the Madrid Protocol in the country soon. It will ratify the Indian trademark registration on par with the Madrid system, administered by the International Bureau of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Geneva, Switzerland.
The decision comes as the part of the government's efforts to modernize the administration of intellectual property administration as a more efficient delivery mechanism along with a shortened response time, according to Ashwani Kumar, minister of state for industry. Addressing a seminar on IPR organized by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) in association with DSK Legal, the minister informed that the government has allocated a sum of Rs 320 crore in the 11th five year plan, in which there will be funding for creating facilities as per the Madrid Protocol.
Commenting on the modernization programmes, the minister (whose speech was read out in absentia by R S Julaniya, joint secretary, ministry of industry) said, "The need for efficient technology markets is becoming evident in the context of improving innovation processes by facilitating exchanges of patented inventions among private and public sector players. An effective IP valuation system can speed up not only technology transfer, but also open up opportunities for exploiting IP as such."
Currently, there are 80 countries including United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, China, Australia and Russian Federation that have signed the agreement for a common acceptable trade mark registration. The Madrid system offers a trademark owner the possibility to have the specific trademark protected in several countries by filing a single application with the national or regional trademark office of the applicant.
The Madrid system, established in 1891, simplifies the subsequent management of the mark, since it is possible to record subsequent changes or to renew the registration through a single procedural step. The Madrid Protocol, under the system has been established in 1989. The international mark registered under the protocol is equivalent to an application or a registration of the same mark validated directly in each of the countries designated by the applicant, according to the Madrid agreement concerning the international registration of marks.
To meet the increasing demands for an up-to-date and efficient delivery mechanism in the Intellectual Property administration in the country, the fund allocated in the current five-year plan will be utilized to make the Indian Patent Office an International Patent Searching Authority and International Preliminary Examining Authority. In order to further complement the IP administration initiatives towards capacity building, human resource development and awareness and outreach activities, the government is entering into bilateral cooperation arrangements with several countries, added Ashwani Kumar.
Michael Owen, consul general of US consulate, Mumbai, said that the need for the cooperation between India and the US in capacity building in the Indian IP infrastructure. A close cooperation in the IPR regime between India and US could lead to strengthening of economic relations manifold. Joint research and development should be encouraged which can bring significant pay-offs for both the countries. Effective mechanism should be put in place to check tendencies like fake vaccines administered on children, which had proved fatal, he maintained.
In the session covering Indian Pharmaceutical and Biotech patents, Ranjit Shahani, vice chairman and managing director of Novartis India and the president of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), Dr Prabuddha Ganguli, CEO, vision-IPR and Dominic Keating, IPR Attache, American Embassy, New Delhi presented the facts and their views on various aspects of patent and data protection in India.