Current General Studies Magazine (March 2016)
General Studies - III "Science & Technology Based Article" (India’s IPR Policy)
India’s first IPR policy trots out the worn western fairy tale that more IP means innovation, and encourages the pointless privatisation of indigenous knowledge
India’s National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy, released in mid-May, is a bewildering document. There are two ways to read this policy. The first is as a gigantic exercise in dissimulation, with a terse declaration — India is not changing its IPR laws — tucked inside a mountain of hot air to keep the U.S. and the European Union warm and happy. The other way to read it is as a serious attempt to make policy of tremendous national significance. A serious reading, however, reveals critical problems.
The National IPR Policy is keenly concerned with generating “awareness” of intellectual property (IP) in the country. (So much so that the word “awareness” appears at least 20 times in the policy.) The policy calls for nothing less than a new gold rush towards IP — roping in everyone from university professors to people in “rural and remote areas”.
IP and innovation
On the face of it, a policy to grow IP, commercialise it, and thus drive economic growth sounds plausible. Unfortunately for us, it is not. First, innovation thrives in an environment where access to knowledge is real and substantial. We need knowledge to make knowledge. A key driver of access is openness. The Indian government, as the largest funder of research in the country, could have mandated that this research be made accessible to scholars through open copyright licensing, but has chosen to abdicate this responsibility. Second, while innovation is a desirable economic goal for any society, the academic consensus is that IP is not a good measure of innovation. Innovation is largely driven by forces other than IP law, and the policy shows no signs of understanding this tenuous connection. Third, conflating IP with innovation can be dangerous. IP signifies activity — the activity of producing IP. For this activity to be useful, it must generate value in a society, by being commercially or otherwise licensed and brought to market.