May, 2008: The importance of intellectual property is growing globally and especially in India and China, the two fastest developing economies. Though the number of patent application is increasing, the grant of application is at a slower pace. The USPTO received 468,000 patent applications in 2007 but according to a report there is a pendency of 760,000 patent applications by the end of 2007 at USPTo. There is a growing shortage of examiners at various patent offices including USPTO, EPO and JPO. It is also reported that almost 90% of all patent examinations at the USPTO are rejected at / the time of first review. This indicates the poor quality of applications, both in terms of technical compliances as well as on the criteria of patentability of the invention. In order to minimize the time for grant of patent USPTO is considering new options of adopting a deferred examination process, presently used in Japan and Korea. At such a juncture, India can provide a solution to several problems by producing quality patent examiners through its vast human resource. It is in this background that the world community represented by WIPO has recognized India as International Search Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examination Authority (IPEA) for the patent applications filed under Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

The Government of India has taken several initiatives to modernise and digitalise its Patent and Trademark offices allover the country and is also conscious for providing adequate training by setting up training institute at Nagpur. IP Education is gaining importance in all IITs and National Law Schools in India.

IP Enforcement is gaining importance. US is in the process of bringing the anti-piracy bill - The Prioritizing Resources and Organisation for IP Act (PRO IP Act). In todov's globalised economy, the business community needs to be very careful while conducting business transactions which involve IP rights. IP Litigations and Compensations involve huge sum of money, therefore utmost care needs to be taken to protect one's IP and to avoid infringing the other's IP, whether in the form of copyright, trademark, design or any other form of invention or technology.

ITAG is the first company in the country which has taken initiative to provide corporate consultancy and training programs on Intellectual Property Management which is essential for improving the quality of IP professionals and the IP Services. ITAG team can help individuals and corporate to manage their
Intellectual Property.

--Dr. D. R. Agarwal