"Indian professionals will match or exceed abilities of US professionals"

Dr Kailash Joshi, former IBM executive and co-founder of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), heads the core management team of the Global Institute of Intellectual Property (GIIP), New Delhi, as its chairman and mentor. In an interview with BioSpectrum, Dr Joshi throws light on the institute's approach to produce quality IP professionals. Excerpts:

GIIP has been set up to cater to the growing global patent and IP services business? What is the present estimated size globally and what is the expected growth? How much of this market share do you think India can capture?

The global data today adds up to a few million patents filed world-wide each year. In addition, there is the task of patent maintenance, management, litigation etc. that requires highly skilled technical and legal minds and entails several tens of billion dollars of business. Even if India captures 10 percent of this market, it will amount to several thousand high quality jobs and many multiple of secondary jobs. The revenues from patents royalties and licensing will become a measurable part of India's GDP as well.

How is the industry in the US as compared to India where it is still nascent?

The IP industry in the US is decidedly the most mature and extensive in the world. On a scale of 1 to 10, if the US is 8, then I would place India at around 2, but going up fast.

How would you compare students taking up a career in IP and patents in India with those in the US? Where will India now take off with the course being offered by GIIP?

I think there is a gap which we are trying to fill. In the US, the law schools teach some IP and then both law and technical graduates informally do on the job training. Since we have a chance to do it more comprehensively in India, we are pulling together both the academic and practical aspects of the IP knowledge in a formal diploma curriculum. We believe this approach will produce high quality professionals with serious knowledge of both the Indian and US systems. We do expect that the Indian professionals will match or exceed the abilities of the US professionals in this area.

What do you think are the reasons why work in this field would be outsourced to India?

Just like in IT and other KPOs, India has two advantages that will remain for quite some time. These are availability of skilled English speaking manpower and their competitive cost.

Will the introduction of such a course change the view on patents and IP and more people take it as a career?

Yes, IP and its economic impacts can be very significant. As India becomes more sophisticated, it will create huge IP of its own and also protect the IP of other nations. Both these will bear fruits in terms of prosperity in India and around the globe.

What about plans to set up overseas centers of GIIP?

First and foremost, we want to make the Delhi center very successful in terms of quality of training and students. Then we will expand to other Indian cities, other Asian countries where English is a language of IP (South Asia, Malaysia, Singapore etc) and then possibly to Europe and the US.

Are you looking forward to any exchange programs with foreign universities?

Yes, we are in discussions with a few US universities and will soon offer joint certification programs in India and also get some of our course participants to visit and work with the faculty and experts available at these universities.

Do you plan to have any partnerships and collaborations besides the current exclusive partnership with Silicon Valley Seminars (SVS), USA?

In the US, we are keen to associate with one or two leading universities for joint programs.

In India, we have done a co-operative 6-week course with IIT Delhi recently. We would like to repeat it and also do similar programs with other educational institutions of repute.

We are also actively building strong relationships with KPOs, law firms, as well as MNCs who will all benefit from our training programs and our IP expertise.

Shalini Gupta