INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: INDIAN SCENARIO

Global competitiveness has redefined business strategies worldwide and the focus has certainly shifted to examining how our knowledge resources can reposition our stand in the world market. It means that process of wealth creation is changing from resource based to knowledge based i.e. it now depends on brainpower and our ability to create, to sell, to explain and to solve problems. As a result, in future the wealth would more and more come out of our brains and less and less will it come out of the ground. And the goods and services being created by our brainpower would be marketed in the global village. Now a basic issue to be addressed is that how can this property of knowledge be protected? And prior to this we need to think that how the knowledge can be converted into property? Since knowledge is abstract and is not like a car or a house which can be locked and secured against theft. If anyone gains knowledge it does not reduce that available to others. There are two ways of turning knowledge into property. One way is secrecy, which is used to protect three types of information, namely trade secrets, know – how and rituals