Patents & publications: In Indian perspective

Intellectual property rights are the exclusive rights granted to individuals over the creations of their minds by the country to use his or her creations for a limited period of time. The types of intellectual property rights are Patents, Copyright, Trademark, Industrial designs and Geographical indications. A patent is a grant of right by the government for an invention to the inventor in exchange of full disclosure of the invention. A patent is a legal right that allows applicants and assignees to use and exploit their inventions for a period of 20 years from the date of filing of application. For the duration of the set period, the patent holder has the legal right to prevent others from commercially exploiting/using his/her invention and if anybody found doing so he can take legal actions against that person/company/organization. Patent provides many benefits to the inventor/researcher but why Indian researchers prefer publications instead of patenting their work. In this review article we were tried to find out the reasons behind it. Lot of reasons came to front after the study like totally online procedure of application, long waiting time, application and other fee, answering within time frame, command in English language, drafting expertise etc. And on the other hand publications need less labor, expense and time. Although many problems are there in patenting but if the work is authentic, genuine and novel, the inventor should go for patenting, so that he/she can use it commercially. Commercial use will not only benefit the researcher but it increases the Gross domestic production of the country. It is also duty of the every researcher to help in country’s development.