India is the second largest telecommunication market with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revenue expected to reach $225 billion in 2020 and to harness India’s potential as an innovation ecosystem there needs to be more focus on Intellectual Property creation and commercialisation along with harnessing the advantage of the international patent system. To promote this, The Ministry of Electronics & IT, Government of India (MeitY) together with the European Patent Office (EPO) and European Business Technology Centre (EBTC), organized “Seminar on Emerging Technology Trends in the ICT sector” on 2nd April 2019 in New Delhi. This seminar was an initiative organized as part of the MeitY-EPO’s workplan 2019-21 and was in fact more of a follow up to similar initiatives undertaken over the past few years.

Mr Poul V. Jensen, Director, EBTC initiated the seminar by giving the welcome address where he spoke on new issues arising such as patenting of inventions such as AI. He emphasized on the need for more such awareness sessions and expressed his support to Meity and EPO on their initiatives. 

Mr. Gerard Owens, Country Coordinator/ICT delivered the inaugural address where he spoke about EPO’s role and responsibilities as a leading IP office from the world as well as EPO-Meity co-operation

The key points highlighted in this seminar by experts were:

•European countries together count amongst the top patent applicants in fields of technology such as medical technology, digital technology, etc.

•EPO’s approach towards examining computer related inventions has set the benchmark regarding examination of patent applications around the world.

•There is a huge deficit in the numbers of patent applications filed by Indian applicants as compared to their foreign counterparts.

•Indian businesses need to adopt strong IP strategy to fuel their growth in the future.

•For startups it is extremely important to engage services such as IP Pre-diagnosis.

•The patent data is a powerful information tool and exchange of the same would help in further innovation and hence will create more investment opportunities.

The session was a huge success as it incited further interest among the participants who emphasized on the need for more such discussions to help empower startups and SMEs and foster a conducive IP ecosystem in India. 

For more information, mail on dasgupta@ebtc.eu log on to our website