Intellectual Property Facilitation Centre in Punjab

FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerece and Industry) has set up an Intellectual Property Facilitation Centre (IPFC) at Chandigarh for the benefit of units in Punjab and Chandigarh to encourage innovation and help protect intellectual property rights (IPR).

With the support of Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the IPFC would facilitate the MSMEs to identify, protect, maintain, enforce and commercialize intellectual property by helping innovators address their IPR requirements.

IPFC for MSMEs was set up in Patent Information Centre (PIC) of Punjab State Council for Science & Technology (PSCST), in August, 2009 by the Ministry of MSMEs. However, the activities were undertaken from August 2009 to March 2011 and the centre was inactive thereafter due to certain administrative problems.

Gurharminder Singh, senior scientific officer and incharge, PIC, said “We intend to restart its awareness campaign by organising IPR Sensitization Workshops for sports goods industrial cluster at Jalandhar and Hosiery Cluster in Amritsar in the month of November 2014.\”

The Centre provides services like:

• patent searches
• patent drafting
• patent prosecution
• facilitation in commercialization of inventions
• Trademark prosecution matters etc.

 The objectives of the IPFC:

• To enable MSMEs from states in understanding, Identifying & using Intellectual Property for Competitive Advantage.
• To Provide Services such as IP Protection, IP Awareness & Training, Counseling & Advisory Services.
• To hand hold MSME for identifying Intellectual Property in their day to day business & leverage it for Business Excellences.
• To provide MSME, the strategic management of Technology and IPR
• To create a delivery mechanism for comprehensive awareness & training in IPR to all stake holders of IP in the corresponding states

 Other Centers include:

• IPFC Mysore, inaugurated
• IPFC Indore, inaugurated
• IPFC Gandhinagar inaugurated
• IPFC West Bengal
• IPFC Gujarat,
• IPFC Pune IPFC New Delhi
• IPFC Hyderabad, March 26, 2012.
• IPFC Guwahati