Discussion on proposed "Public Funded Research and Development (Protection, Utilization and Regulation of Intellectual Property) Bill"

My high-level take aways from the discussion on "Public Funded Research and Development (Protection, Utilization and Regulation of Intellectual Property) Bill" are:

1. Bootstrapping of IP generation and commercialization is too important an activity and I just hope this bill is passed ASAP by the parliament.
2. I would love to see more accountability provisions in the bill. A minimal return on investment should be mandated in return for higher public spending on research.
3. If this bill is to succeed and IP generation in public funded research is to take off, it is very important to educate the research community on IP related concepts and practice. It's heartening to see that the bill mandates the creation of an IP management cell in every institution that receives public funding for research.
   

Running notes from IP Discussion

• Basics of IP
  • IP rights are seen as incentive for inventors and investors
    • Seen as "good for public"
    • Not clear if this assumption is true
      • Research on this topic is inconclusive
  • Different types of IP rights
    • Patents
    • Copyrights
      • Protects works of authorship
      • Bcos of BERN convention, copyrights are almost universal where as patents are territorial
    • Trademarks
    • Trade Secrets
  • International conventions on IP Protection
    • BERN convention for copyrights
    • Paris convention for Industrial IP
    • TRIPS under WTO
    • All of these try to accomplish basic consistency in laws
  • Most IP rights (except Trademarks, Trade Secrets) are time-bound
    • Ashcroft case challenged consistent prolonging of copyright terms
      • Mickey mouse syndrome
• IP created via public-funding
  • US act allowed universities to own IP that comes out research funded by the public
  • Similar bill proposed in india
    • Timelimit proposed for IP disclosure
      • Countries in which univ wants to retain rights also need to be listed
      • Univ MUST take steps within certain time period before the right to claim expires
    • Only disclosed IP can be owened by the inventor
    • IP management cell must be set up - otherwise, funding will be suspended
    • 30% of income needs to be shared with the inventors
    • Out of the remaining 70%, 30% can be used by the IP cell
• Exemptions
  • E.g., Methods of medical treatment is excluded in india
  • Govt. has the declare IP as unenforceable, or mandate compulsory licensing
• Questions for discussion
  • Is IP protection warranted?
    • Debate died down bcos of WTO
    • IP rights encourage technology transfer
    • Reverse engineering efforts are "Wasteful"
    • IP rights do not really encourage "creators"; they do make sense where large investments are required
    • Countries should be able to decide on areas where IP rights should be reduced
    • Patent offices are not always doing their job leading to abuse
  • Does India need such a legislation?
    • Data shows 70% govt funding of all public research
    • Puts pressure to re-invest in research
    • Puts presssure to show returns on investment
    • Does it impede knowledge sharing?
    • Should it go further?
      • Should it mandate certain rate of return
    • Spirit of extracting value
    • Good inventions stay on the shelf currently
      • No infrastructure to file a patent
      • No infra to market inventions
    • Awareness will grow among the academia
  • Implementability
    • Infrastructure for commercialization is missing
    • Companies can exploit faculty?
    • "Return on investment" is the point that really needs to be made

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Higher education policy in India

Here are my high-level impressions from OpenForum's discussion on higher education policy in india.

1. India did quite a reasonable job so far on expansion of higher education. Cost of educating an engineer is the lowest in India! While the quality of education is indeed suspect, the world's hunger for more and more engineers has been met quickly by the Indian education sector.
2. What's really sad is that the government is still stuck with the idea that education should not be profit-oriented and hence, in india, only non-profits organizations such as trusts can open colleges. Apparently, this is the case elsewhere as well but I feel it is terrible for India because it shuts out actors like TATA and Reliance from education. We cannot have a chain of Reliance colleges, all sharing common infrastructure.

Running notes from Higher Education Policy Discussion

• Expansion

  • 10% enrolment in higher education

    Only 30% of stength in engg. medicine and management education where private expenditure is 85%

    PhD - 0.5%, PG - 8% of overall graduate population

    Per university, we only have 4000 students?!

    65% engg. enrolments in southern states; not the case for overall higher education

    • Is english a determinant?

    govt. expansion is very low

    Education is defined as state responsibility

    • Maharashtra: high % of budget going to education?

    Personal expenditure needs to be taken into account, because % of personal income spent on kids education is quite high

    As % of total adult population,

    While expansion is happening, it is skewed by region/groups

    My observations

    • Random expansion, based on need of the hour?
    • Skew in higher education towards engg. Medicine, Management need more attention if not arts.
    • Relevance of higher education in rural areas?

    Only 5 engg colleges in UP until mild 90s

    Are new IITs, IIMs an answer to expansion needs?

    Expansion into sectors that are not in "demand" is a government issue

    Unlike in nehruvian era, educational expansion doesn't seem to be by design

    Focus is on number expansion rather than on efficiency improvements

    • How many students is each university catering to?

    Rayudu's observations

    • Initial focus on education was to produce civil servants
    • But today, more than 50% of the economy is services-centric
    • Govt's focus was on access to elementary education
    • Socialist leanings meant - Education was seen as out of bounds for private investment
    • 1986, 1991-92: Privatization allowed where there was a manpower crunch
    • Very low cost in producing a graduate!
    • Cartels in medicine and CA stopped expansion

    People's aspirations drove expansion areas

    • Globalization impacted this

    725,000 seats in engg., 400,000 in ploytechnic

    Summary

    • Govt. should limit to balancing acts
    • Expansion did not happen in all areas
    • Rural expansion: is it required? how should statistics be read?
• Inclusion
• Quality
  • Engineering education acting as a proxy for ...?
  • Degradation in quality where market drivers are not there
  • Accreditation
    • Institutional level accreditation - NAC
    • NBA - by AICTE - certifies at program level

      • Until 2004

        • 70 metrics under 8 categories

        57 metrics now

        • About 19 independent factors

        Should be predominantly process and input oriented - but seems to mix some output metrics that are not fully controllable by the program that is being accredited

        Problem in one metric can be overcome by better prerformance in other metrics, bcos total score is used for accreditation

        Marking is subjective even if some of the metrics are objective

    • Globally, is document-intensive but not in india
  • Faculty availability
  • Syllabus and examinations are controlled externally. This hurts teacher-student relationship
  • Industry not involved in definition of metrics
• Policy
• Trade
  • India, china account for large % of the buying community
  • $30B of eductation import/export trade globally
  • India imports about $800M - $1B
  • 140,000 indian students go abroad per year
  • 17000 students come to india for education
• Cost recovery
  • Only 20% in govt. inst.
    • Goal is about 25% internationally
  • 100% in private
  • Lots of regulation in place
    • Admissions
    • Fee structure
    • Programs
  • Scholarships not favored of late by the govt.
    • Loans are preferred
• Other notes
  • Common entrance tests have effected the chances of weaker sections
  • My thoughts
    • Public/Private framework for education business
      • Rewards in the form of jobs
      • Industry needs to define quality metrics
    • Education bubble?
      • Bubble burst will lead to better policy frameworks?
    • Trickle down effect on quality?
      • Real choice for students will only come after awareness campaigns
    • Capacity
      • Distance education
      • Investment intensive?
      • Chains of institutions
        • Reuse of lessons
        • Reliance? :-)
    • Demand
      • Indirect impetus to arts and humanities

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Man made global warming - reality or a convenient argument?

Here are my high-level take-aways from OpenForum discussion on man-made global warming:

1. It does make sense to conserve energy and resources - after all, it results in money savings too!
   
2. BUT, most of the "green" talk that took on a feverish pitch of late is a direct result of businesses realizing that they have "green" products/services to sell. E.g., IT firms such as IBM and Sun talk about Green IT. NDTV regularly runs a "green" ticker sponsored by Toyota. Obama constantly talks about US government funding "green" businesses in order to create jobs.

Running notes from Man-made global warming discussion

• Threats to
  • Cities
  • Developed world
  • Farming
    • Long assumed calendars change
      • Traditional Monsoon
        • starts around may 15
        • rains atleast every 10 days
        • stops around november
      • Monsoons of late
        • Starting late
        • Intensity is high
        • Gap between rains is longer
  • Threat perception is different from nation to nation
  • Submergence of islands
• Benefits
  • Higher the CO2, better photo-synthesis and higher the yield
    • Plants use about 400 litres of water for absorbing 1kg of carbon
    • But will water be available?
• Actions
  • Euro3/EPA
  • Energy efficiency/consumption
  • Carbon trading/CDM
  • Renewable energy
  • Environmental law
    • Enforcement is missing
• Views of participants

  • We seem to be worried more about debunking false theories but let's assume truth will come out eventually in an adversarial system where lobbies on both sides are equally powerful

    There is no argument that there is change

    • Question is can we do something meaningful about it?
    • Militating against consumerism has not been successful so far
      • One insurance company prints 650000 pages per day
      • Economics of energy usage are very important
    • Positioning ourselves in a way that we can survive in many eventualities
      • Access to clean technologies
      • Land availability for solar panels, ethanol production, wind mills
      • Green computing intiatives

    Related to other problems such as health?

    • Not really - SO2, N2O can be reduced without reducing emissions

    Hydrogen storage

    Lobbies and beneficiaries

    • New engine technology lobby
    • Alternative fuels
      • Bio
      • Nuclear
      • Solar/wind
    • Mass transport lobby

    Higher the efficiency, higher may be usage

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Discussion on Agricultural subsidies at WTO and Indian Interests

Disclaimer: What I'm blogging here are just impressions formed from the discussions at OpenForum. I may be loose in my language and hence, this material can at best be used as a quick summary; it is definitely not intended as an authoritative summary.

Doha round of WTO is currently stuck on the topic of agricultural subsidies. India is leading a group of developing nations in pressurizing EU and US on reducing the subsidies they give to their farmers and agri firms. EU and US are of course not very eager to give in. Who's losing out in this battle of wits? What is India's interest in this negotiation? Is it really true that India and other developing nations are losing out as a result of past WTO accords? These were the questions that were discussed by the OpenForum.

I'm attaching at the end of this blog the notes I made during the discussion. The points that stand out are:

1. India's trade in agriculture is very small compared to overall agricultural production in India. In other words, India neither exports nor imports much of farm products.
   
2. Given this, India may not really have too much stake in the agri subsidies debate. Seems like India is really using this issue to gain concessions in other discussions and this seems to be a common practice in WTO.
   
3. Contrary to popular opinion, Indian government seems to be playing its cards well, with about a 100 member delegation in geneva
   
4. WTO has enabled quite a few developing countries to safeguard their interests. Ecuador's banana example is funny. Ecuador won its dispute with EU on banana trade by threatening to suspend TRIPS and allow piracy of EU IP in Ecuador. Similarly, India seems to have bartered (outside of WTO?) opening up of legal services market in India in exchange for opening up of US market for India's mangoes.
   
5. It's important that WTO succeeds in increasing world trade. It's not really an evil as it is often made out to be. Ignorance on how WTO is really structured is creating unnecessary paranoia.
   

Running notes from discussion on "WTO Doha Round - agri subsidies and indian interests"

• Notes made before meeting
  • Are we producing as much as we can?
    • Is land available?
      • Total land area: 328 million hectares
      • 140 mh of sown land - roughly same since 1970
      • 122 mh is unavailable - forests/grazing/other uses/barren
      • 13 mh - culturable waste land
      • 27 mh of fallow land
      • Cropping intensity - 135%
    • Is water available?
      • 55 mh of net irrigated area
      • 77 mh of total irrigated area
  • How much is available for export after internal consumption?
    • Rice: 3.4 million tonnes exported out of 85.72 million tonnes!
    • Oil seeds: 3.1 million tonnes exported out of 22.6(?) mt
    • Wheat: 4mt out of 70mt
    • Total exports: 25 mil tonnes excluding marine and paper/wood, out of about 545 mt?
  • Impact of subsidies in other countries
    • Impact on our exports
    • Impact on competitiveness in india
    • Impact on consumers in india
  • Impact on our subsidies
    • Impact on our exports
• Discussion Notes

  • WTO's core principles

    • Bilateral MFN agreements cannot impinge on a third country
    • Outsiders will be treated as insiders
    • Act as a dispute settler

      • Example: Ecuador/Gautemala vs. EC

        where EC wanted to prefer north-african suppliers of bananas

        More than 400 disputes argued

        • 300 settled
    • Periodic negotiations

    Reverse consensus

    • Proposal is accepted unless there is consensus for dumping the proposal

    India maintains a 100 member delegation in geneva

    Uruguay (1995) round - formed WTO

    Singapore (1999) issues raised by developed countries

    • Trade and investment, e.g. limitation on foreign ownership
    • Trade and competition, e.g. MRTP like anti-monopoly laws
    • Trade facilitation
    • Government procurement

    Doha (2001) Development agenda proposed as a retaliation to Singapore issues

    • Till doha round is consummated, singapore issues are not to be taken up

    Novartis - gleevec

    Agriculture

    • Domestic support
    • Export subsidies
    • market access

    mango market access bartered for access to law services mkt

    even on imports, we want to reduce subsidies as otherwise monopoly can come into place on the supplier side

    why is india interested in lower agri subsidies although there is little direct benefit

    • india - wants to delay NAMA
    • india - better bargaining power in services
    • Afro-carribean parties (acp) coming together for cotton subsidy reduction

    Why are indian farmers against wto?

    • Once subsidies are ruled out, india also cannot subsidize its farmers
    • red subsidies - direct incentive to producer for exporting
    • amber subsidies - those that may have an injurious impact on others

    Non-trade concerns

    • Food security
    • Allied activities - crop insurance scheme, may get hit

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