Managing Patents and Intellectual Property Rights
By Pankaj Maru
Mumbai, May 19, 2008

In the past few years, Indian companies and enterprises have established themselves in key fields such as IT, electronics, telecommunications, and biosciences. These companies carry out a wide range of research and development projects on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, on many occasions all the hard work and efforts of the Indian enterprises go down the drain as foreign firms and companies challenge innovations and new developments on the grounds of patent and copyright laws.

The chief reason behind this situation is that Indian firms and enterprises are not well versed with the patent and copyright laws of different countries. Lack of an intellectual property management solution could also be another reason.

According to Kalyan Kankanala, director and CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) of Brain League, "There's a great need of IP (Intellectual Property) management in India. Hence companies need to be educated and guided in this area, so that they get aware about the legal aspects of patents and copyrights." Kankanala is also a co-founder of Brain League.

The company offers services which includes drafting, filing, and prosecution of patents, litigation search, technology landscaping, registration of copyright and trademarks, patent searches on databases such as Delphion, Micropatents, and Dialog.

"Our in-house technical team has developed a proprietary software application - BLONE (Brain League ONE), which helps companies in managing their intellectual property (IP) rights and patents. We offer specialized and customized patent services with the help of experienced patent analysts and patent agents in the field of technology domains," Kankanala says.

About BLONE, Kankanla explains, "While enterprises and companies are doing business in different countries it becomes necessary to know about the legality and business issues. BLONE assists companies, about countries such as US, Japan, China, Canada, and European nations and their respective patent, copyright laws, and trademark procedures."

In addition, Brain League offers Open Source Software (OSS) consultancy and training services. Here, a team of experienced IP lawyers, software engineers and experts in the Open Source, work and guide companies on the legal and business aspects of OSS. Also, the training services aims to create awareness about flexibilities and liabilities in using OSS among staff users.

Along with other services, the company has Intellecture Online - an online portal to cater internet-based interactive training courses on IP basics and patent laws. These courses vary from basic to advanced level and aims to develop IP culture among the company's staff working in different verticals.

The portal also offers industry-based courses targeting biotechnology and IP, software and IP, and other fields. Software and IP course contains modules such as software protection under IP rules, software violations, licensing, OSS related issues, and so on.

"We receive lot of applications from companies working in the area of biosciences, pharmaceuticals, along with computers, electronics and technology. The biosciences field already has a well placed own patent structure, but now more and more IT and Electronics companies are approaching for patent services," informs Vineeta RadhaKrishnan, senior patent analyst (Biosciences) at Brain League.

"Off late, the trend of patenting is increasing in India, in particularly among the tech companies doing business globally. We have about 140 clients globally and 70% of them are from the IT and computers field based in India and US," she concludes.


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Protecting your Intellectual Property