Chennai :

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.

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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.

source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com / Business Line / Home> Industry> Education / by T.E. Raja   raja.simhan@thehindu.co.in  / Chennai – June 26th, 2013