National Awareness Workshop on Intellectual Property Rights REBYNA RANA

GANGTOK, 13 Feb: A daylong National Awareness Workshop on Intellectual Property Rights [IPR] was organised here at Janta Bhawan today by the National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology [NIELIT] in association with Department of Electronics & Information Technology [DEITY], Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, Government of India.
120 students from Sikkim Law College, ICFAI, SMU and NIELIT attended the workshop.
Sensitizing the students on Intellectual Property Rights, Principal Director cum Secretary, DIT, Sikkim, Dr. Rajesh Verma, informed that IPR was the right given to persons over the creations of their minds.
He added that Intellectual Property Right is a general term where Intellectual Property is any product of the human intellect that the law protects from unauthorized use by others.
Informing about Intellectual Property Rights patents, Dr. Verma said that patents are a long-established means of encouraging innovation. “Intellectual property right confers to the holder the exclusive right of exploitation and enables them to exploit the invention by manufacturing, using or selling products or processes incorporating the technology covered by the patent. A patent is the legal document that describes the invention and grants a property right to the inventor or their successor”, explained Dr. Verma.
However, only 50,000 patents have been registered so far in India, so in order to create awareness on copyrights as well as patents this workshop is being organized, he said. Here, he said that we must get positive and also encourage students to innovate.
Dr. Verma appealed to students to register their software and copyrights. He also urged the Science and Technology department to conduct small workshops regarding this for students.
Additional Director cum Coordinator, Patent Information Centre, Department of Science & Technology, Sikkim, Dr. BC Basistha, said that the concept of Intellectual Property Rights is very new to Sikkim and the department has been working hard on educating the masses about it. He further spoke on the need for Intellectual Property Rights.
Dr Basistha highlighted the need to understand Intellectual Property Rights better in order to make the most of it. He informed that IPR centres have been set up at the school and college levels and camps and seminars are being organized every year. “We also have patent and data search facility which is free of cost, and if anyone wants to register a patent then they can come and do a patent search”, he said.
Likewise, Technical Director, NIC Sikkim State Unit, Dr. LP Sharma, said that this workshop is a beginning in the right direction.
The workshop was also addressed by the Scientist-B, NIELIT, Gangtok, Khagendra Sharma and resource persons from Kolkata and Delhi.