Road Map for Agricultural Technology Transfer and Commercialisation

Technologies developed in research or academic institutions are typically transferred through an agreement in which the university or the research institution grants to a third party a licence to use its intellectual property in the defined technology, sometimes for a particular field of use and/or region of the world. The technology transfer process promotes commercialisation, reach of better products to the market and job generation. The expenses incurred towards intellectual property protection and its maintenance can be justified in view of introduction of better products, increased completion in the market, enhanced customer satisfaction, and more revenue and tax generation.

India became a signatory to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 1998. As a result, patent filings have increased exponentially. Considerable changes have been made in the patenting procedure through the introduction of Patents Rules, 2003, which were further amended in 2005 and 2006, resulting in new practices and procedure (OCGPDT 2011). In recent years, the Indian government introduced many schemes, began to provide soft loans and promote venture capital funds to foster its national innovation system through project-based programmes. The current trends in respect of filing of intellectual property applications are depicted in Figure 1 (OCGPDT 2014).