Intelllectual Property(IP) Education

IP education today stands at a similar position, which general education(English) was at about 200 years back and management education was about 75 years ago. The promise of general education then was(is) to "liberate" people from parochial attitudes and to bring "world view" into every individual. The general education introduced us to a world of new possibilities: new explorations, new discoveries, new ways of governing and new ways of choosing our institutions. Today liberal education has regarded as one of the best thing that happened to us.

On a similar note IP education today promises us a new world of intellectual possibilities and enhanced prosperity. A possible world where people become creative and express their creativity by means of innovative solutions and products. A range of legal means such as patents, trademarks assure creative people of owning their creations and harness them for business and personal motivations. The new IP enabled world encourages people be more creative and as a consequence entire world would benefit. The mission of IP education is create awareness about this wonderful world of possibilities for creators and rest of the public

Forms of Intellectual Property

In law particularly common law jurisdiction intellectual property(IP) refers to a legal entitlement which sometime attaches to the expressed form of an idea or of other intangible subject matter.The Most well known form of intellectual property include copyrights, patents,trademarks & trade secrets. Common types of intellectual rights including

• Copyrights- which give the holder some exclusive rights to control some reproduction of works of authorship such as books and music, for a certain period of time
• Patents give the owner an exclusive right to prevent third parties from commercially exploiting an invention for certain specified period, usually 20 years from the date of a patent application
• Trade marks are distinctive phrases, manes or marks used to identify products to consumers
• Trade secrets, where a business firms keeps information secret, perhaps by enforcing a contract under which those given access to information are not permitted to disclose it to others

Lack of Patents: Economic Loss to India

India was losing at least 2000 patents every year in the United States and Europe on traditional formulations as 'our knowledge on these has never been documented,' Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said here on Tuesday. For detailed story read news item in Hindu

Intellectual property and Patents

Intellectual property (IP) is a useful idea with scalable application potential. It is useful because it provides a mechanism to protect a new category of properties such as computer software or chemical formulae or even algorithms.

Patent is on of the available IP forms. It is a legal means to protect a novel invention. James Watt protected his steam engine with a patent. Patent allows disclosing of a novel invention to public while retaining awarding ownership to the inventor. Disclosure help the rest of the population to harness the new invention and ownership helps inventor to "earn" reputation and wealth