back
Dissertation
Immaterialgüter- und Wettbewerbsrecht

Rebalancing Incentive Paradigm – In Search of Utility Model Protection for India

The small and medium scale enterprises have less capital, manpower and technology than large scale enterprises and as a result, innovations of small and medium scale enterprises often fails to fulfil strict requirements of patents. Thus one thinks for second tier patent protection.

Last Update: 14.09.16

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India has recently floated a discussion amongst the stake holders on the need for Utility Model Protection in India. It indicates the country’s movement towards examining desirability of such protection.
The patent system’s structure and processes are designed to stimulate invention, innovation and diffusion by giving the inventor/innovator a sufficiently strong and long-lived competitive advantage against imitation in return for public disclosure of information about the invention.  Advocates of strong patent policy believe that no one will innovate without a patent incentive, while evidence shows that this is clearly a myth. Macdonald has observed this myth as faith which can be influenced by evidence.  
The utility model protection has to address the issue of allocation of rights between “inventor” and “improver”. This model also has to ensure that it will not end up in tragedy of anti-commons It has to ensure that its soft obviousness criteria encroaches future innovation effort as “a patent system should not only avoid wasteful competitive R & D, but it should also avoid encroaching on future R & D that is socially desirable”. It should be kept in mind that the incentive for disclosure which fits well with regular patent system does not work in case of utility model.


 

Persons

Doctoral Student

Anirban Mazumder

Supervisor

Dr. Roberto Romandini

Doctoral Supervisor

Prof. Dr. Ns. Gopalkrishnan

Main Areas of Research

Funktionen, Zielsetzungen, Werte und Wertungskriterien