As a part of MHRD’s Innovation Cell initiative, Xavier University Bhubaneswar (XUB) hosted a workshop on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) on 10th January 2019. The MHRD’s Innovation Cell works to systematically foster the culture of innovation amongst all higher education institutions, with a primary mandate to encourage, inspire and nurture young students by supporting them to work with new ideas.
The first offline session was delivered by Prof. Narayan Chandra Sarangi, who has worked in senior management cadre as a specialist officer-law in a large PSU Bank for 8 years; lecturer in law for 2 years and practiced law as an Advocate in High Court /CGIT/DRT for 7 years.
The discussion started with introduction and talking about the kinds of IPR that exist in the present scenario. Prof. Sarangi mentioned that Intellectual Property is a creativity of human mind or ingenuity and its recognition is through declaration of what one considers to be his/her intellectual property. It is a reward of honor to people who thought out of box and to safeguard them financially.
Prof. Sarangi then moved on to discuss in detail about Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks and Start-ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP). In lieu of discussion on Copyrights, he mentioned about the copyrights violation case of Delhi University vs Oxford University. He also mentioned about Trademarks being the unique identity of a brand in a business.
Followed by the session by Mr. Sarangi, a Facebook Live session was also conducted by the Institute Innovation Cell with the same theme. The speaker for the same was Ms. Shwetasree Majumder, founder of Fidus Law Chambers in 2008, Board of Directors of the International Trademark Association (INTA), member of panel which worked on the Verma Committee Report with her experience in litigation, enforcement and counseling in intellectual property, technology, advertising and trade secrets matters across a broad spectrum of industries had a good interactive session on intellectual and property rights.
She focused on how the market forces determine the commercial dependability of an invention and not the rights given by IPR which provides a scope of IPR that claims to give the protection to the intellectual property and entitle a person associated with it. She further described that Logo, Business, Numbers, Color combinations, Word, Symbol, Numeral and Packaging are trademarks used to identify a business whereas, Descriptive words, National and regional symbols, Single color, Function or common shapes, Single numeral and letters and Functional packaging are not trademarks.
Both the sessions proved to be very insightful, wherein the students and the faculties gained a bag full of information about IPR, Trademarks and Copyrights and made the audience understand the value of patents, infringement and the future prospects of IPR in the current scenario.
ABOUT XUB
Xavier University Bhubaneswar (XUB) was established in accordance with the Xavier University Act 2013 and was inaugurated on the 7th of July 2014. XUB is India’s first digital University and an institution of higher learning for imparting professional and technical education. It is a self-financing institution imparting professional and technical education. XUB has 8 Schools that offer world-class education in different fields. XIMB offers an MBA in Business Management, Global Management and Executive programs. Xavier School of Human Resource Management (XAHR), erstwhile XIMB-HRM, offers the MBA-HRM program. MBA-RM is offered by the Xavier School ,of Rural Management (XSRM), erstwhile XIMB-RM. MBF- Master of Business Finance is offered by Xavier School of Commerce, MBA-SM by Xavier School of Sustainability (XSoS) and MBA-UMG by Xavier Center of Urban Management and Governance. The Xavier School of Sustainability, Xavier School of Commerce, Xavier Center of Urban Management and Governance, Xavier School of Economics, Xavier School of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Xavier School of Communications offer different postgraduate and undergraduate programs.