February, 2009: ITAG implies power of ideas and believes that the ideas translated into innovation and inventions empower the individual and the entities that create the same. ITAG provides a gateway for advancement of technology created through such innovations and ideas. There are two primary concerns of the creators of such ideas and innovations, protection from counterfeiting and piracy of such new ideas and realization of its commercial value. ITAG has come forward to provide an umbrella service in the field of Intellectual Property Management. There are plethoras of financial institutions to manage your tangible wealth especially the financial wealth but there are very few who undertake and advise to manage your intangible or the intellectual wealth. In today's knowledge era almost eighty percent of the global wealth is represented by intangible wealth and so is true for the innovative organization. A successful organization is one which believes in innovation and continuous up-gradation of its technology and its application for manufacture of its products and services. ITAG helps in protection and commercialization of your Intellectual Property (IP) and also undertakes training and awareness programs for understanding the potentiality of IP and the recently concluded international conference was an initiative in this direction. We acknowledge our gratefulness to all those who helped in making this unique conference in Kolkata successful and especially to Indian chamber of Commerce, our co-organizer to the event and to the team of Sughrue Mion PLLC, USA who provided their knowledge support. We are also grateful to all those who participated from different parts of the country and abroad.  We shall continue our endeavor to organize such program in future as a part of our knowledge mission. In a short duration of less than two years ITAG has been able to identify Intellectual Property Management (IPM) as its core area and has been providing valuable quality services to its client and to the society. IP Due Diligence is one of such important area which help our clients in establishing the validity of the title while buying a technology. We also evaluate the competitive strength of any technology and help our clients in choosing and pursuing the areas of research through IP analysis and patent landscaping. We suggest our client about proper accounting and valuation of intangible assets. Our techno-legal team advises in drafting confidential and non disclosure agreements with third party vendors and employees to protect trade secrets. IPM includes IP commercialization by IP broking by bringing together the inventors and the investors. Technology transfer is one of the emerging areas for cross border exchange of knowledge and the Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) ensure proper legal framework, administration and enforcement of IPRs. The patent protection is granted on national basis and there is no global patenting though World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides for Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT) for facilitation of international patent filing. Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is another such drive to facilitate prosecution of the patent application by way of common search and common examination facility between two Patent Offices. The PPH is a bilateral agreement between the patent offices of two countries that allows a much speedier processing of a patent application if another Patent Office has already performed a search and examination for the same invention.

At present only a few Patent Offices have signed bilateral agreement for easy facilitation of prosecution under PPH namely Japan, USA, Germany, UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Denmark and the European Patent Office. India being an International Search Authority (ISA) and an International Preliminary Examination Authority (IPEA) should also think of signing PPH with few advanced countries in order to enable speedier processing of International Applications filed by Indian Nationals and Indian Companies. India Government should also take initiative to speed up the process of playing its important role as ISA and IPEA.

--Dr. D. R. Agarwal