The Benefits and Barriers of Patenting: How Academicians and Researchers Can use their IP to Improve Research Outcomes: An Indian Perspective

Patent protection is the exclusive rights to protect the invention which forbid the manufacture, use, distribution or trade of the invention by others unless they get permission from the patentee. Patent is granted to those inventions which are novel, inventive and have industrial or commercial applications. In India patenting is governed under the law “Indian patents act 1970”. Recently India has become one of the top pioneers in filing of patents compared to other countries. One of the main reasons is the strong enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) which plays pivotal role in motivating researchers so as to improve their research outcomes and enhance economic development. With the several developments in various fields, India is mainly focusing on R&D sectors to encourage researchers by dissemination of knowledge and information about benefits of patenting. This article mainly highlights the benefits and also the barriers of patenting and how a researchers can make use of their intellectual properties to improve research outcomes. We also concentrate on the status of patent filing and also to investigate the problems faced by researchers while patenting their inventions and analyze significant efforts taken by Indian patent office.