Activities Round Up

Enabling Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to buy or sell Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), an online IPR Exchange has been launched by Secretary in the Ministry of MSME Mr Madhav Lal on April 4, 2013 in New Delhi.

This exchange is India’s first online exchange for Intellectual Property, which has been set up by the industry body, Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME) with support from the British High Commission.    

“The IPR Exchange created by FISME with the help of British High Commission creates a wonderful mechanism to extract value of all the knowledge based initiatives an enterprise has taken. Its promise of converting such knowledge-based initiative into money is worth giving a serious push,” said Mr Madhav Lal.

He said in a 30 million strong sector (MSME) in a billion strong country, “we need initiatives that could be scaled up to make appreciable impact.”

“Small businesses are important for every economy to flourish, such initiative will encourage them to come up with innovative ideas and protect them from being copied,” said Mr Andrew Jackson, Counsellor Knowledge Economy, British High Commission.

The event started with screening of an in-house documentary based on importance of Intellectual Property Rights for MSMEs in India. 

Be it IPRs of  technological inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names, images and designs or copyrights of poems, films, music, paintings or radio or TV recordings,  each of them can be traded online on the IPR Exchange set up by FISME.

Last year, FISME organized a national contest on “Identification and Valuation of IPRs in MSMEs” and the winners Ms Surbhi Mehta and Mr Kaustubh Sinha have won the contest. They were awarded with the cash reward of Rs one lakh in the event.

FISME received more than 30 abstracts for the contest, all over the country. Out of the abstracts received, 12 were shortlisted for submission of detailed papers. Further, three best research papers were selected and complied into a book named “Identification & Valuation of IPRs in MSMEs”.  

This book has been inaugurated in the event.

Meanwhile, FISME President Mr D Gandhikumar said, “A business case –evaluating a decision from the perspective of profitability, demands that for the protected intellectual property to be bought, sold, assigned or transferred like any other physical property, its value ought to be ascertained through a market based mechanism. The IPR exchange aims to do just that”.

It would also help the entrepreneurs to assess valuation of their IPRs through a specialised service. 

FISME has been actively involved in the promotion of IPRs through various initiatives like the Intellectual Property Facilitation Centres (IPFCs).

The centres spread in various cities like Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore.