India exempts application fee for 3 years for sports-related IP copyright, patent, design or GI products

In a bid to incentivise innovation, India has exempted application fee for a period of 3 years for Intellectual Property (IP) copyright, patents, design, traditional knowledge and Geographical Indicator (GI) products. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that the zero fee-regime apply for a period of 3 years, after which decision will be re-examined.Citing the example of traditional games like Kho Kho and Kabaddi, the Minister stressed on the need to take IP in sports seriously, as he called for the need to register new ideas by youngsters with the IP office for conversion into an IP asset. The Minister was speaking at the occasion of the World IP Day at Vanijya Bhawan in New Delhi. Director of the Hague Division at the WIPO, Marie Paule Rizo, underlined that IP is most powerful when “accessible not only to large corporations but to startups, MSMEs, and individual creators.”Earlier in the day, Secretary with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Hari Ranjan Rao noted that the government is finalising a dedicated scheme to promote domestic sports goods manufacturing, with embedded provisions for research and development (sports scientists), startup support, and intellectual property creation. The Secretary said that India’s sports goods manufacturing base remained limited to the two isolated clusters of Jalandhar and Meerut devoid of a globally competitive scale while elite Indian athletes continued to rely predominantly on imported equipment. “Without innovation, without R&D, without having our own patents and IPR, scale to dominate the global market would be very difficult,” he said.

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