FDP Programme for Faculty Inventors
Shanas Fathima, IP Attorney
On 10th January, 2013, IP Dome presented
the IP SMART innovator workshop at the National Level faculty development
programme (FDP) – winter school on Innovation,
Research and IPR.The seminar was conducted at the S.A.Engineering College,
Veeraraghavapuram, Chennai. Sixty faculty members from the host college and
surrounding colleges participated in the workshop including research directors
of two institutions. The workshop consisted of a strategy workshop and a
technical workshop.
The strategy workshop conducted by Swapna Sundar,
CEO, IP DOME, emphasised the importance of planned research and strategic
innovation for faculty members. In the light of the AICTE guidelines outlining
the process of accreditation, where colleges would be graded on their ability
to generate patents and IP, and the research projects of their faculty, planned
research leading to protectable IP becomes imperative.
Unplanned and
serendipitous inventions are few and far-between. Colleges and faculty members
cannot rely on serendipitous occurrences but must work in a focussed manner and
ensure that their research leads to patents. Swapna outlined a smart process
based on case-studies of successful innovator companies such as IBM, Pfizer and
Honeywell, whereby research design and technology trend analysis can lead to
strong patentable outcomes. She also emphasised the importance of maintaining
inventors logs and having well-designed IP disclosure measures to enable the
college to capture all innovative ideas and harness the IP potential of their
faculty and research scholars.
Hariprasad took the podium to make a
well-researched presentation to demonstrate that technical analysis of patents
in the field of interest can lead to patentable inventions with high potential
for industrial use. Using live examples on freely available databases, he
pointed out that the process of planned research is integrated with the process
of prior-art study. A well-defined and clearly articulated set of keywords,
combined with a good understanding of the field of interest and a nuanced
creative instinct could lead to a patentable invention with minimal wastage of
resources and effort.
The seminar was greatly appreciated by the audience
who also engaged in a long interactive session with the resource persons.
No comments:
Post a Comment