Indian Brains Behind 50 Percent of U.S. Patents

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 01 February 2012, 20:59 IST
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Bangalore:More than 50 percent of total patents filed for industrial innovations in the U.S. have Indian brains behind them, reveals a study by Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Many of the international corporations, including research and development centres rely largely on Indian brains. A look into the number of Indian inventors in patent applications filed by overseas firms in India and outside in the latest years makes the new trend more clear.

The study 'Foreign R&D Centres in India: An Analysis of their Size, Structure and Implications' comes up with the assessment that local researchers play an important role providing business notions in R & D projects for foreign firms in India. The research also estimates the involvement of multi-national companies in the creation of innovations from India.

The authors of the study, Rakesh Basant, faculty member of IIM-A and Sunil Mani from the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum carried out the study taking 120 samples of MNC R&D firms, which were established after 1990.

The study also mentions about ‘reverse innovations’, that means innovations which happened first in Indian centres and then transferred back to their parent R&D firms, which can be used in both developed and developing country market.

A greater part of the R&D centres are either subsidiaries or categories of MNC’s based in the US. ICT sector is an industry where they are highly operative. "Over time, 50-66 percent of the total US patenting of industrial innovations are recorded in India, conducted through these centres," says the study.

As per the recent calculations, the number of overseas R&Ds functioning in India was about 900, until December 2011. In the years 2002-2003, the R&D expenditures from foreign companies was 286 crore, which drastically increased to an amount of 2883 crore in the years, 2009-10.In addition to this, there was an increase of 20 percent in the share of foreign companies in total R&D companies.

The study also laid the suggestion that R& D policy has to be improved in India so as to get benefits of MNC R&D activities."India does not have any explicit policies to promote FDI in R&D although there exists in the country a number of policy instruments, fiscal and otherwise, for promoting FDI and incentivising the conduct of R&D," the study says.