According to Aggarwal, Indian companies also have to be really vigilant very early in the product development cycle about previous patents filed.

This might mean employing specialists to keep track - else there could be a heavy price to pay: typically about $3 million per case. Indian companies are now starting to employ people to do tracking.

Says Milind Gandhe, head market analysis and research marketing at Sasken: "We have a cell which works full time on this as well as other issues of patent filing."
Of course there's a remedy - get the right kind of insurance against such action.
But Gandhe says it means a lot of work.

"We bought insurance just a few months ago. The insurance agency does a lot of due diligence on IP before they take up your case - and this requires that each and every employee needs to maintain a record of the work they are doing, almost creating a log book which sort of proves that the IP has really been created by us."
Companies in the product space, which are more likely to be able to make millions on IP, should start being aware of the value they create, said Aggarwal.

Gandhe said they have recently started to bill not against time and materials but want to take royalty. His advice to small product companies is that they must try and get the Tier One companies whom they design products for to part with royalty - because the volumes will ensure huge

A huge lesson that Patni Computers learnt the hard way was that they did not file a patent for the IP they created for a client in the field of RFID. This is now such a hot market in the US that Patni certainly has lost a potential money-spinner.
The main issue, according to those at the panel discussion on the subject of IP, is that Indian software companies are simply not aware of what they must do to protect IP, and engineers are even less aware.

A forum to help IT companies with these issues may be on the cards soon.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004 (Thiruvananthapuram):NDTV.com

A medicine could soon become a test case for a patent battle between India and the United States.

A Kerala government institute, which holds the Indian patent for the anti-fatigue drug, Jeevani has discovered that a US company, NutriScience was already selling it in America.

The Tropical Botanic Garden Research Institute insists that the move is illegal.

"All this reflects to a fact that people have just cashed on the fame of Jeevani and tried to put something, which may not be exactly Jeevani," said G M Nair, Director, Tropical Botanic Garden Research Institute.

Two per cent cut

The institute was getting a two per cent commission from a Coimbatore based pharmacy licenced to manufacture Jeevani.

Officials add that ideally the US company, which was selling the drug at 12 times more than the Indian cost, should also be paying a 2 per cent fee to the Kerala Institute.

And according to officials the fact that the US company is not paying the prescribed amount, is a blatant violation of intellectual property rights.

Legal action

There is also the big question as to how the US firm procured the required herb Arogyapacha. This herb only grows in the Western Ghats.

Kerala government officials say this is a serious violation of the Biological Diversity Act.

"This act prevents taking away biological species in whatever form from one country to another," said Dr KRS Krishnan, Director, Kerala Science and Technology Department.

The American company's website however, claims to have rights to sell the drug. But the institute is still considering legal action on three counts, namely misuse of a trademark and manufacturing and using the formulation without its consent.