The Indian Patent law is supposed to be playing spoilsport in blocking almost 50,000 innovations from seeing the light of the day according to a business daily. Section 3(d) of the Patents Act, 1970, according to the news report, seems to be at the center of the problem. The news report also airs the view of an official of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry saying that India probably has the most stringent patent regime in the world in not recognizing innovations which are improvements for a patent. The view seems to be emphasizing itself by briefly elucidating on the innovation activity presently going on in rural India but sans any patent protection. Citing an example, the view from DIPP says that an innovator from Kerala recently developed upon the smoke house used in drying rubber sheets by lessening the required fuel by sixty percent but that does not makes it eligible for a patent under the Indian regime as it is an improvement.

The news report quotes Professor Anil Gupta from IIM-Ahmedabad and executive vice-chairman of the National Innovation Foundation ruing the fact that incremental improvements are not granted patents as it is done in Germany, Australia and Japan but if done so they can prove to be a buoyant area of Research & Development. Prof. Gupta feels, according to the news report, that if innovation has to go from grassroots to global, then it’s important to switch gears and convert innovators to entrepreneurs.

The potential of thousands of innovations from the rural hinterland may be harnessed by transforming them from mere ideas to industrially applicable innovations through appropriate legislation.