Strategies and Policies for Integrating IPR in Higher Education Sector in India

The current era is the era of knowledge. Knowledge has become a powerful tool to win any war-like situation. Today, global economies run on the power of knowledge. To make a country more powerful, more knowledgeable human resources are required. Thus, the role of the education sector is prominent in creating knowledge resources. Knowledge concepts are systematized and disseminated through the education system. As per the World Bank report, India stands third in the world after the US and China as far as the higher education system is concerned. However, when we talk of quality in higher education, it falls short of institutional recognition at the world level. The reason may be the lack of impetus for innovation and research in India's education system. To improve the quality of higher education in India, a new National IPR policy was launched in 2016 to promote innovation and creativity in higher education institutes. Also, a new National Education Policy was formulated in 2020 which acknowledged less focus on innovation and research in higher educational institutes as a major problem and aims at developing academic inquisitiveness, scientism, and creativity in these institutions. It is necessary not only to create new knowledge but also to protect it as an intangible human asset. Through Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), the owner gets proprietary rights over the newly created knowledge or innovative ideas, though for a limited duration of time, thereby reducing the chances of theft or misuse of these. The present study focused on understanding the importance of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and strategies in terms of policy measures and steps taken by the government to integrate IPR into the education sector in India. The study found that though, the government is taking many measures for popularizing the concept of IPR creation and promotion, still much awareness needs to be created among students and faculties. The study is based on content analysis of secondary data collected from sources like published government reports, research journals, research articles, websites newspapers, etc. The study is descriptive and exploratory