IIT Madras on patenting spree

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is wasting no time patenting the technologies developed by its faculty members. It plans to leverage the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) of technologies as revenue earners.
The institute also found that filing patents in emerging nations such as Bangladesh and Africa provide more value for the innovation than registering them in advanced countries.
This year, IIT Madras is likely to file nearly 40 patents, a 25 per cent increase over last year. Next year, the target is to reach 50, said Krishnan Balasubramanian, Dean, Centre for Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research.
Last year, revenue from IPRs was about Rs 2 crore. “We are negotiating a large deal this year that will double or triple revenue from IPRs. On an average, we are targeting Rs 3-4 crore annually in the near term,” he told Business Line.

Top fields

Tield of nanotechnology saw the highest number of patents, as some of the faculty in this domain are “very aggressive.” Other areas include wireless technology, air-conditioning, noise and vibration, said Subramanian, who is also a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Faculty members also separately apply for patents for technologies they have developed in collaboration with various companies. This could be another 20 every year. Companies file the patents with the faculty’s name in it. There will a revenue sharing agreement on this, he said.
There used to be a perceived conflict between patenting and publishing. This is only a perception, but not true. If a faculty member feels that they have developed something that is patentable and publishable, they can do both, said the institute’s director, Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi. The institute has an Intellectual Property Cell, he said.
Balasubramanian said that the IPR management involves patent process and commercialisation. Through incubation, faculty and students take up some of these technologies for formulating business propositions.
There is also an eco-system – the IIT Madras Research Park – developed over the last few years to foster incubation. The institute also work with companies to take certain scalable IPs rapidly into the market. The patent process takes a long time. “So on the date we apply for patent, its commercialisation starts simultaneously,” he said.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kota Topper Story: Shitikanth IIT JEE 2008 Topper

Image
I gave JEE in 2009 and used to hear about this "topper" guy from the 2nd floor of my hostel. Topper of A1. I didn't pay too much attention. Then one day after my dinner my friends asked me if I noticed who was sitting next to me during the meal. I said no. They said it was the same guy. I didn't care much there either. I saw him for the first time in a cricket field. The lean stick-figure boy who didn't speak much. He had a ball in his hand and a single electric pole was being used as the wicket. I was fielding. I saw him bowl and all my senses absorbed after that was the clattering sound of the ball on the pole. That's when I was introduced Sitikanth. And the stories began! Once during class, V K Bansal (THE BANSAL of Bansal Classes) told us a story of when 2 weeks before JEE Sitikanth came to him, dejected and confused. Saying he had nothing to do. Bansal Sir gave him the toughest integration problems he had, thinking this should be enough to keep him a...
More IIT and JEE preparation news >>

IIT PAPER LEAK IN 1997

Image
A private coaching institute in Lucknow secretly called a select group of its students on the evening of May 2, barely 12 hours before the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), for `valuable suggestions'. Nearly 100 students out of the total 700 reached and were told that the tips should be learnt by rote. The next day, much to the excitement of the students, 70 per cent of the physics and chemistry questions appeared in the examination papers. The father of an examinee told IIT authorities in New Delhi over the telephone about the leak but he was rebuffed. ``Such doubts are normal and are expressed every year by parents whose wards have not done well in their examinations,'' said an IIT official. The same procedure was adopted for the mathematics paper the next day and this time too the coaching institute was bang on target. Most of the questions figured in the actual paper, some with minor change ...
More IIT and JEE preparation news >>

The Most Brilliant Students of Kota Ever

Image
Anuj Nagpal(AIR 190):  This guy was the most intelligent person I ever met. In hostel, he was one of the most fun loving guys, he only used to do the assignments of mathematics (only because it was taught to us by the director of the coaching). Though I was not in his hostel but my closest friends were in his hostel and used to tell me all the stuff they did at night. Late night chats, discussion about random things (which had no relation with JEE at all). There was a time when all feared Nagpal and used to say "Nagpal is gonna come and he is going to spoil our full night." That guy was much different from all other people I have ever met.  He got an AIR 190 only because we weren't taught inorganic chemistry, else he would have got much better rank than this.  He is AIR190 in JEEAdv 2014, AIR190(State rank 2) in JEEMain 2014, BITSAT score-398, CBSE 12th %- 97.6. Rajdeep(AIR 1700 in first attempt, AIR 1200 in second attempt):  This was the coolest guy I ever met, s...
More IIT and JEE preparation news >>