WTC Goa Organizes Awareness Programme on IPR

World Trade Center Goa along with MSME Development Institute Goa organized an awareness programme on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) on 09th January 2020 at Panaji, Goa.

Mr. K. Devaraj, Presiding Officer of the programme and Director MSME Development Institute Goa, in his welcome address spoke on the various Financial assistance for grant of Patent / Registration under Geographical Indication (GI) of Goods that covered the Domestic patent and Foreign Patents as well for Trademark. He also emphasised the need for setting up of IP Facilitation Center to cater to the needs of the MSMEs in the State of Goa.

The Chief Guest, Mr. Deepak Parab, Nodal Officer, Goa State Patent Information Centre (PIC) and Project Scientist (Environment) Goa State Council for Science and Technology said that the PIC's main role is to facilitate the registration of Intellectual Patents within the State. He also informed that the Centre deals with other facets under the IPR like Trade Marks, Copy Rights, Industrial Designs, Geographical Indication (GI). He further informed that Goa has now got GI's for Cashew Feni and for Khola Chillies. Mr. Parab advised the new innovators to restrain from making too much publicity of the new products before getting exclusive rights as offered under patent registration.

Necessity is the mother of inventions that encourages ideas to be turned into commercially viable products, said Mr. Sadanad Verenkar, Guest of Honor and Managing Director, Sunshine Electric Co. Pvt. Ltd while speaking on the process for finding new products. He said that innovations done after pain taking research and development must be registered under the IPR to enable the innovator to fully exploit the commercial value of their creations.

Mr. Darshan Vani, Guest of Honor and Proprietor, Vaibhav Times, said that the time taken to actually be registered under the various facets of the IPR is very long and hence this creates a loop hole for copying of products. Mr. Vani made a passionate appeal to the authorities concerned to look into this area and come up with concrete solutions to reduce the time taken for granting registrations and thus help the industry in safeguarding its products from being copied by others because of this loophole.

Speaking passionately about the cluster approach, Mr.Prasad Kulkarni, Assistant Director, MSME, Development Institute, Goa, said that clusters would bring manufacturers of a similar product under a single umbrella and they could then be provided Common Manufacturing Facilities and hence he was of the opinion that under these circumstances that IPR could be very useful to a company to safeguard its products from being copied by their competitors.

Advocate Ms. Shalini Sitaraman Menezes, Director, SimSim Advisory Pvt. Ltd, made a detailed presentation on IPR. She started her presentation by explaining the concept of IPR and moved on to its classification and characteristics. She also explained the difference between intellectual property (IP) and intellectual property rights (IPR) and detailed the different aspects available under the IPR Umbrella. She also gave insightful explanations on copyright, trademark and patents. She concluded her presentation by touching upon the subject of trade secrets.

Mr. Cyril Desouza, Assistant Director, Trade Promotion while proposing the vote of thanks mentioned about the WTC activities and said that to reach the global market it is becomes very imperative for companies to understand the protection offered under the various facets of IPR to safeguard their product.