Patenting In The Land Of Saraswati And Lakshmi

1. Introduction

FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL, INDIANS HAVE WORSHIPPED GYAAN, VIGYAAN AND buddhi—knowledge, science and the intellect. Hindu culture has also harboured an aversion to wealth creation from knowledge. The following legend llustrates the profound disdain for the very idea of commercialising knowledge: knowledge-bestowing Saraswati and wealth-granting Lakshmi, wives of cosmos-creating Brahma and order-preserving Vishnu, respectively, could not live together in harmony—reflecting the Hindu discomfort in linking knowledge and wealth. Even today, it’s unusual to find images of Saraswati and Lakshmi in the same house.

India abounds with anecdotes of gurus who imparted wisdom without expecting anything in return, with students offering just a voluntary ‘guru dakshina’ (offering) in gratitude. In history, King Chandragupta Maurya’s pragmatic advisor on statecraft, Chanakya, seems to have been the only noteworthy exception. “Arth karicheye vidya” (‘create wealth from knowledge’), he asserted, almost 2,300 years ago.

Given the cultural context, it is hardly surprising that Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose—the first to invent a wireless system that transmitted radio waves over a distance of 75 feet—was against any financial gains from his inventions. In a letter to Rabindranath Tagore, he explains why he turned down the business proposal of a telegraph company proprietor who had come ‘patent form in hand’: “My friend, I wish you could see the terrible attachment to gain in this country, that all-engaging lucre, that lust for money and more money. Once caught in that trap, there would have been no way out for me.”

In 1904, frustrated by Bose’s obstinacy, two of his friends, Sister Nivedita and Sara Bull, took the initiative and obtained an American patent in his name (for his invention of the galena single contact point receiver). Bose, however, still refused to make money out of his invention. Patrick Geddes summarised Bose’s reaction aptly in his authorised biography later on: “Simply stated, it is the position of the old rishis of India, of whom he is increasingly recognised as a renewed type, and whose best teachings were ever open to all willing to accept it.” Isn’t it ironic that the spiritualist Nivedita had to do what the inventor Bose ought to have in the first place? Or is it simply that the British-born Nivedita was a child of industrialised Europe?

2. Western Influence on Patenting: Lessons for India

Judge the West’s patent-savviness from the following:

• Guglielmo Marconi, who filed the world’s first patent in 1896, for a system of telegraphy using Hertzian waves, founded the world’s first wireless telegraph and signal company in 1897.
• Albert Einstein was a Swiss patent examiner during 1902-1909, when he wrote his papers on Relativity. He continued at the patent office even after achieving fame in 1905, though he later became a professor.
• Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephony system in 1876. In 1877, two businessmen financed him to create Bell Telephone Co. that later became AT&T.
• Thomas Alva Edison sold his first invention—an unpatented stock- quotation printer—for $40,000 (Rs 18.4 lakh) He used this money in 1876 to start a lab that led to 1,093 patented inventions, one of which helped the installation of the world’s first large central-electric power station (in New York) by the Edison General Electric Co., today’s GE.
• Abraham Lincoln was awarded a patent for a ‘Device for Buoying Vessels over Shoals’ on May 22, 1849, and he remains the only American President to have been awarded a patent.

And our record? More than a century has gone by since Bose, but not much has changed.

• Professor C.N.R. Rao, the former Director of the Indian Institute Of Science (IISc), published more than 1,000 research papers, but did not file a single patent.
• The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research in India (CSIR), with 5,400 scientists working with annual funding of $225 million, has been granted 159 patent applications by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during 1991- 2000. In contrast, the IBM research division, with 2,700 scientists and about $540 million, filed over 900 patent applications in the year 2000.
• The seven IITs, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and the IISc have hundreds of professors and students. And yet, these nine institutions only filed 84 patents with the USPTO during 1991-2000.
• India lags the US, Japan and Germany in terms of converting government expenditure on R&D into valuable patents.

3. Fostering a Culture of Commercialization

During 1997, the IBM Research Division assigned me the task of setting up an IBM Research Laboratory, which I did in April 1998, on the IIT Delhi campus. Now IBM operates on patent application ‘quotas’, and we were asked to file 12 during 1999. Thanks to the Indian genius, we ended up filing 19. Impressed with our progress, GE decided to open a lab in Bangalore of its own.

Yet, creating a culture of active patenting and generating value from it requires some big success stories. Indian scientific competence has already been acknowledged, but at the moment, even Florida State University, with seven patents per year, earns more revenue from patents than CSIR. Commercialisation is important.

India’s premier research institutes are so focussed on basic research that the business prospects get left out. Lack of Intellectual Property (IP) policies, of course, is another problem. But on the whole, much can be done. And must be done quickly, if India is to catch up with the West. “The introduction of patent laws,” said Lincoln, “was one of the three most important developments in the history of the world,” and “the patent system adds the Fuel of Interest to the Fire of Genius.” For India, it’s time to renew the old advice: Arth karicheya vidya.