Nature of the company: A large multi-national company with an R and D center in India
Why they approached us:
- Wanted to improve the quality, and number of inventions coming out of their Indian R & D center;
- Wanted to spread IP awareness among their engineers/scientists, and build some basic skills such as patent searching, disclosure drafting, and so on;
- Wanted to set up an in-house IP team, and institute processes that suit specific Indian circumstances.
What did we do:
- Performed a comprehensive IP Audit/Mining exercise to accomplish two objectives:
- Uncover potential IP not disclosed earlier by inventors; and
- To study the R & D processes, culture, and employee mind set.
- Organized a series of awareness programs across divisions to build IP knowledge and skills;
- Organized boot camps for specific personnel nominated by the company for the IP team.
- Devised processes/mechanisms for identifying inventions, improving transparency in the evaluation process, and taking shortlisted inventions for filing to IP attorneys.
Impact:
- About 148 potential inventions were uncovered, and 36 went for filing.
- The number of invention disclosures improved by three fold.
- The in-house IP Team to co-ordinate internal IP activities was set up within a month.
- An efficient, and transparent idea disclosure, assessment, and IP/patent process was set up.