September, 2007: Intellectual property (IP) is an important intangible corporate asset and ITAG provides an opportunity for harnessing the same in this contemporary knowledge economy. Private corporate investment in IP exceeds one trillion dollars in United States but in India the gap between the inventions and the investments continue to widen due to lack of proper linkage between the scientists and the business community. Inventions are lying unexplored and unutilized with the universities and research institutions for which proper IP mining is necessary for putting them in to commercial use by proper protection through IP registration with Patent and other IP authorities. CSIR, TIFAC and NRDC are few Government organizations that encourage filing of patents but still the dissemination of knowledge in this field is not adequate. ITAG is trying to bridge this gap by bringing the research community closer to industry through various training programs on valuation, securitization, and commercialization of various IP assets including Patents, Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Copyrights by proper identification, accounting and their disclosure in the financial statements.

Government of India has entered into bilateral treaties with several countries to promote trade and investment cooperation through proper awareness program on IPR in collaboration with their representatives in India. All the patent and trademark offices are going under modernization and e-filing facilities have been introduced in the country. Though the business objective of ITAG is to mobilize its clients base in US, UK and other European countries for filing their IPRs in India but it equally adheres to the need of the domestic clients for their IP asset management and for filing of their IPR in India as well in as USPTO, EPO and other countries outside India.

--Dr. D. R. Agarwal