Intellectual Property Rights and Patent Laws in Indian Scenario in Relevance to Innovations and Licensing Policies

Intellectual Property Rights are constituted as one of the exceptions to the market mechanism meant to offer incentives to the private sector in certain fields where competition and free access are not deemed to provide appropriate incentives for innovation and development and are considered as an important legal mechanism to foster economic development by subsidiary technology transfer. The basic aim of conferring an intellectual property right is to give social recognition and economic incentives to its holder. It is a kind of social contract between society and the inventors, for making improvements as well as developing substantive new innovations. IPRs are limited monopolistic rights excluding others not authorized from commercial exploitation of the invention. The main legal instruments for protecting IPRs are patents, copyrights, trademarks, Industrial designs, geographical indications integrated circuits and plant breeder’s rights.