The Hindu : National : UGC to set up IPR cells

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 02, 2004

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National

UGC to set up IPR cells

By Mohamed Nazeer

KANNUR, MAY 1. The University Grants Commission (UGC) will set up Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) cells in the country to offer direct support to university researchers and teachers for filing patents and also establish Technology Incubation Centres (TIC) to support lower order technologies connected with service industry.

The UGC Chairman, Arun Nigavekar, told reporters at a press conference here on Friday night that the UGC had written to the Vice-Chancellors of all the universities in the country for launching activities with the objective of creating awareness among teachers on the IPR. In the first phase, the UGC would hold a large number of workshops and seminars to create awareness among the teaching community, he said.

"The teaching community is not yet comfortable with and fully aware of the IPR and we have to change the mindset,'' Dr. Nigavekar said. As the 21st century was called a century of knowledge, teachers were not aware that knowledge was wealth. "Today we are talking about knowledge-linked economy and knowledge itself is treated as a unit of currency,'' he said adding that knowledge was generated through education.

In the second phase of the new scheme to be launched in the next academic year, an IPR cell would be set up in each of the four regions in the country to offer training in filing patents. All universities in each region would be helped in signing and filing patents by the cells to be set up in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology (DST), he said.

Dr. Nigavekar said the UGC would also collaborate with the DST for setting up the TICs from next academic year. Some universities across the country would be identified for establishing the centres, he said adding that the focus would be given to the low order technologies that were connected with the service industry, especially the business process outsourcing sector which required connectivity. "This is where a lot of opportunities comes for general graduates who need support and help to do skill-oriented courses in an entrepreneurial manner and this is where TICs will be converted to knowledge processing parks,'' he said adding that TICs would be set up in universities that had acquired reputation of having offered such courses.

"Out of 9.3 million students in the country, 7.4 millions are general graduates. We have to make their degrees useful to them,'' he pointed out. The UGC would hold a meeting of Vice-Chancellors in the country in Coimbatore in June on setting up TICs, he said.

The UGC chairman said that as part of promoting Indian higher education abroad, the UGC was planning to identify universities that could be taken in foreign countries, including the U.S. and those in the Middle East, South East Asia, South Asia and Africa. The effort for promoting good universities abroad to attract foreign students would be started in May, he said adding that a promotional initiative would be held in Baltimore, the U.S. in May end.

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