Patent Filings in India Are Rising Fast—but Are Universities Cutting Corners?
Patent Filings in India Are Rising Fast—but Are Universities Cutting Corners? India today looks, on paper, like a country in the middle of an intellectual property renaissance. Patent filings in India are rising, universities are boasting of innovation, and private institutions, in particular, are flaunting filing numbers that would make even older public institutions pause. Yet, the closer one looks, the more this glitter begins to peel.
The real scandal is not merely that too many weak patents may be getting filed. It is that India may be rewarding the performance of innovation rather than innovation itself. This narrative seeks to examine the background to the filing boom, the incentives driving private institutions to pile up patent applications, the reasons why grant rates remain weak, whether public money or public policy is being gamed, how India compares with the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and China, and why the ultimate question is not who files more patents, but who turns knowledge into useful products, processes, enterprises, and economic value.
