INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (A TOOL FOR CAPACITY BUILDING IN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES)

Entrepreneurship is an enduring asset of any nation. Entrepreneurs with original business ideas can do miracles to Indian Economy. India’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) base is the largest in the world after China. As per the official estimates, there are about 63.05 million micro industries, 0.33 million small, and about 5,000 medium enterprises in the country. The state of Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of estimated MSMEs with a share of 14.20 percent of the total MSMEs in the country. West Bengal comes as close second with a share of 14 percent, followed by Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra at eight percent. MSMEs contribution to the GDP is 28.90% (about 9.44% growth rate). The percentage of patents granted to MSMEs is about 23.4% of the total patents granted by the Indian Patent Office. There is a raise in the Pharmaceutical trademarks applications as against pharmaceutical patents. The author believes that the MSMEs should be more proactive towards intellectual property identification, protection and commercialization. The potential of MSMEs can be explored only when robust IPR protective mechanism is in place. This article talks about the importance of IPRs for MSMEs and also how best IPRs can be used for optimization of their business potential.