The transition of the Indian economy from a pure agricultural to industrial one has been a matter of acedemic and business interest over the years. What is interesting to note however,  is the transition of the industrial economy to a knowledge economy. Albeit, this one has been a more subtle one.

The move towards being a knowledge led economy has led to some hugely interesting developments, including growth of India’s intellectual economy and the supporting eco-system.

On one hand there is focus on knowledge creation and research, on the other is a whole eco-system that supports knowledge preservation and knowledge protection.

Patents and Intellectual Rights are a significant part of that very eco-system. It is this eco-system of knowledge preservation that will act as a catalyst to future intellectual and economic innovations.

A mark of these times is the fact that India has been granted over 15,000 patents in the last one year. This is almost five times more than the previous five years and double of last years. One can read more in this context here

This trend has been aided by the fact that India is viewed as one of the strongest emerging Research and Development hubs.

While there is a spurt in growth of the intellectual economy, there is also a need to build systems and value additions which will aid this growth and help sustain and maintain India’s intellectual innovations.

Some of the key requirments in this direction include:

1. A stronger system of intellecual property protection
2. Better trained workforce to manage India’s knowledge economy
3. Deeper research into knowledge preservation and protection
4. Interface with the global best practices - including countries like Japan, Germany and the USA.
5. Accent and recognition for intellectual property creators and knowledge innovators.
6. Last but not the least - a broad based framework of knowledge creation and maintainence spanning  the economic value creation lifecycle.