Indyvation - India's invention, ideas and innovation resource

Artificial Heart for Rs. 1,00,000 (~ US $2,000) from IIT Kharagpur

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00 +0530

IIT Kharagpur has achieved a breakthrough by creating an artificial heart for a Rs.1,00,000/- (approx. US $2,000). A team of scientists at IIT-Kgp's school of medical science and technology created this "Total Artificial Heart" (TAH) and have applied for human trials. To contrast, the first artificial heart in US cost 3 Million Indian Rs. (Approx. $60,000). Sujoy Guha, an IIT-Kgp faculty member and bio-medical engineering expert, is leading the artificial-heart team. The principal challenges in the artificial heart transplant are body's rejection of the heart and heavy medicines required to suppress the immune system's response to the a foreign object in the body.

Source:Economictimes.com Article

INSPIRE - 10 Nobel Prize Winners To Interact with Students at Allahabad

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00 +0530

The Hindu reports that n an innovative program "INSPIRE" organized by Department of Science and Technology, ten noble prize wining scientists will interact with students in Allahabad. "Among the Nobel laureates likely to attend are physicists like Martin Lewis Perl, Jerome Isaac Friedman, Robert C. Richardson and Sir Anthony Leggett, as also Sir Harod (Harry) Walter Kroto who is the Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, the IIIT-A Director said. Tiwari said the event is inspired by the Lindau Nobel Laureates' Meeting in Germany."

SourceThe Hindu

India's Prime Minister Launches INSPIRE Scholarship to Promote Science Ed

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:00 +0530

PTI is reporting that to attract students to science, "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today launched special scholarships for the youth aimed at identifying talent at an early stage and mentoring them in pursuit of research careers. The Innovation of Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) aims to reach out to 10 lakh students in the next five years in a bid to build human resource pool for strengthening and expanding the science and technology system and, research and development base. "Recognising the importance of this initiative, the government has made an allocation of Rs 2100 crore for it in the 11th Plan period," Singh said launching the INSPIRE programme."

Source:PTI Website

Punjab Engineering Students Design an ATV automobile

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 00:00 +0530

Economic Times is reporting on an ATV designed by Punjab engineering students. "Three final-year mechanical engineering students here have taken the road less travelled by designing an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) named Ridge Ranger, which they plan to launch commercially. ....The three students of Indo Global College of Engineering here are Abhimanyu Sharma, Ish Awasthi and Vishesh Sharma. The four-member team formally unveiled the Ridge Ranger last week in the college campus."

SourceEconomic Times

MIT Harnessing Currents in Water - A Micro-Hydel Solution for India?

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 00:00 +0530

This is a very interesting approach to micro-hydel application by using currents in water just like fish do. India has large potential for micro-hydel applications due to vast arid and semi-arid regions. How will make this a reality? "The world's river and ocean currents carry an enormous amount of kinetic energy, but most of this water flows slower than four miles per hour. Existing turbine and water-mill technologies can't generate enough electricity at such speeds to make their deployment economically viable. Researchers at the University of Michigan say that they have overcome this limitation by taking advantage of energy-packed vortices that are formed when water flows past a cylindrical object, even at low speeds. Salmon and trout are known to leverage the force created by these naturally occurring water swirls so that they can swim upstream. A new mechanical device designed to economically harvest that energy and convert it into electricity could turn waterpower into a much larger part of the world's renewable-energy mix."

Source:MIT Technology Review

India's First Explosive Museum To Open in Assam

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00 +0530

India's first museum for explosives is coming up at Guwahati in the North Eastern state of Assam. The architect of this museum Dr. Padma Pani, Joint Director of the Forensic Laboratory of Guwahati, who is ranked as among the best forensic scientists in India. Different kinds of explosives will be showcased in the museum for police and public to become aware about. Assam is the state that has seen lot of disturbances in last many decades.

Source:Indian Express

India's Moon Probe Lands on Lunar Surface - Chandrayaan's Big Success

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00 +0530

India's maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-I has successfully landed its lunar impact probe on moon's surface today. This is a big success for ISRO and its moon mission. ISRO until now had focussed on satellites and satellite launch vehicles, while moon mission is a pure scientific mission. The impact probe has Indian tricolor flag painted on it. India becomes fourth country to "land" on moon.

IBM Research Labs to Create More Researchers

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 00:00 +0530

Only 50 students go for PhDs in computer science in India from 150,00 CS students - that is 3.3 x e-4!

IBM's India Research Laboratories (IRL) has initiated a novel program to traing engineering graduates and research scholars. IBM calls this program "Blue Scholar Program", which encourages engineers to choose research as their career option right from the start. The Blue Scholar Program will provide specialized training to become a researcher. Manish Gupta of IRL informed that a student will undertake an internship with IRL for two years and can contiue to work as a regular employee after the internship is over.
India creates 150,000 graduates in computer science, information technology, electrical engineering and other related areas. Out of those 150,000 only 50 students go for PhDs in computer science - that is 3.3 x e-4!

Source:Merinews.com

Engineering As a Declining Career Choice Around the World

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00 +0530

Marketwatch is reporting that IEEE is concerned about decline in choice of engineering as a career. "The trend is alarming, and it's global. In Western Europe, Australia, Japan and even in India, the numbers of students attracted to engineering and computer science are declining. For example, a 2003 Harris poll conducted in the U.S. shows that only two percent of first year university students (and less than one percent of young women) want to major in computer science."

SourceMarketwatch

Robocon 2008 Asia-Pacific in Pune, India on 31st August 2008

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00 +0530

Robocon 2008 is being organized in Pune by MIT School of Technology. The main contest is on August 31st with the playful theme of handling butter cubes. The theme is inspired by Lord Krishna's playful antics as a child. Let's see who well the robots from Asia Pacific team do that!

Source: Robocon Asia-Pacific 2008 Official Site

Hero Group to Make Small Aircrafts

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00 +0530

Hero group, which makes the popular motorbikes Hero Honda, is venturing into making small aircrafts. The technology and design for these aircrafts would be provided by a German company. Several German companies like Daimler Benz Aerospace and Deustche Airbus are into aircraft production business. Hero plans to setup their aircraft manufacturing in a SEZ (Special Economic Zone) in Madhya Pradesh in central India. The SEZ will be dedicated to defence and aerospace industries and will have a 1.5 KM long air strip. Indyvation is unable to understand if Hero plans to sell these aircrafts in India or just export them. If they are to be sold in India, why are they being made in an export zone? We hope that soon an Indian company will design and fly an aircraft from scratch like a real "Hero".

Source: Hindu Businessline

Almost Waterless Washing Machine

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 00:00 +0530

A neat invention that would be most relevant to India - A neo-waterless washing machine. This machine uses only a cup of water to wash clothes. Given India's population and rapidly rising urban middle class, a washing machine that uses such a low amount of water would be an instant hit. This machine uses chips that absorb dirt, which was released by the reaction of detergent and small amount of water added in the wsahing process.

SourcePhsyorg

National Chemical Laboratoy's Venture Incubator

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00 +0530

An interview with Dr. Premnath of NCL about NCL's Venture Center.
Indyvation: Dr. Premnath, please tell us about your background, your career at NCL (National Chemical Laboratory, India�s premier chemical research institute based in Pune, India) and how you came to be associated with the NCL Innovation Park?

Dr. Premnath: I am basically a chemical engineer trained at IIT-Bombay and MIT with a specialization in polymer science and engineering and biomedical materials.

As an undergrad at IIT-B, I used to visit NCL as a Nehru Center Fellow for the summer of 1991 and 1992. The influences and experiences during that time have shaped my career in more than one way. I also fell in love with NCL - the institution - and the potential it holds to impact Indian industry and society through technology innovation.

I joined NCL in 1997 (soon after my PhD from MIT) with the goal of contributing to the lab�s polymer science and engineering program, and also to planning and developing institutional mechanisms that could facilitate NCL to have an impact on the nation and society. I have always believed that what we lack in Indian institutions is not good, talented people but systems and values that align these people in the right direction and help these talented people deliver more for the nation and society at large. So all through my career at NCL, I have sought out opportunities and contributed to building organizational systems and mechanisms � some at an all India level.

I am basically a technologist by training and by commitment. To me, science is important because it is a great enabler of technology. I am drawn towards technology led innovation and the great potential it holds in transforming lives and society. I have been extremely lucky to have witnessed this and participated in such activity during my higher education. It is in this context, that I was keen that NCL contribute in a much bigger way to technology innovation. In this back drop and with encouragement from Dr Sivaram (Director, NCL), we started to look at the entire technology innovation value chain at NCL and how we could make it more productive. The NCL Innovation Park and the technology business incubator (called Venture Center) are pieces of this eco-system we wish to build to support and promote technology innovation. We envisage NCL Innovation Park to become home for various public private partnership activities relating to technology innovation � be it with start-ups or existing companies. The Venture Center will specifically look at start-ups based on technology and support them.

Indyvation. What kind of entrepreneurs is the venture center looking to promote? Will the center associate with non-NCL related startups? Basically, who are your target beneficiaries?

Dr. Premnath: Venture Center will be open to any entrepreneur who is exploring/pursuing a business idea that has at its core high-end scientific expertise and know-how often backed by intellectual property, and where the start-up company could gain from being in the vicinity of NCL and utilizing NCL strengths / resources. The Venture Center shall emphasize start-ups which leverage know-how from NCL. The Venture Center is not limited to NCL-related start-ups (though NCL-related start-ups will have some additional benefits). We welcome good ideas and entrepreneurs from any source, any where in the world. We think that researchers and students trying to commercialize a technology idea would benefit immensely from the eco-system and services available at the Venture Center. Indyvation. What are the main key resources the center will provide to startups? We know that the details are there on your website, but wanted to know this from you. Dr. Premnath: The key resources planned are: � Mailbox and hot-desking space � Dedicated office space � Dedicated lab space � Shared and equipped laboratories geared towards materials science based products and certain types of biotech � Information support � IP related advisory support � Advisory support for technology development, R&D management, IP planning etc � Business start-up mentoring � Networks, referrals We have started some of the services already. Some more will come online during this year. If all goes as planned, by April 2009, we should we fully operational. Indyvation: Where does one start? Can I just walk in with a business plan anytime? What's the process of approaching the venture center? Dr. Premnath: Let me tell you how to get started. Venture Center�s web site (www.venturecenter.co.in ) has a list of current services, options available, terms & pricing. Interested persons can review those and apply for services of interest. We welcome email enquiries (email: v.premnath_AT_ncl.res.in) and are happy to explore ways to help technology entrepreneurs and start-ups in any other feasible way. The Venture Center shall be offering services to interested technology entrepreneurs irrespective of whether they are a resident incubatee or not. For applying to be a resident incubate, we shall be asking for a business plan. We have an admissions policy and an admissions committee, which reviews cases and takes decisions. Offers are made to interested start-ups based on space availability. We welcome entrepreneurs with interesting technology business ideas to write to us anytime. Indyvation: What is the typical time frame in which you expect the startup to use Venture Center services and then leave it? Dr. Premnath: We have not set rigid time limits on purpose since science based companies can have widely varying time horizons. For example, while chemical products for industrial use or general consumer use can reach the market quickly, some of the pharma and biotech products have to swim through lengthy regulatory procedures. In general, we wish that the incubator help a start-up reduce early stage technology risks and usually go from proof-of-concept stage to prototype or trials stage. We shall be asking the company to provide us with milestones that they plan to hit while at the incubator and set time frames as per that. We expect 2-3 years as a typical residency period. Indyvation: How does the startup pay for Venture Center's services? Dr. Premnath: The Venture Center has listed service fees for all services at its website. The fees are structured to be reasonable and hassle free. There shall be concessions for specific category of projects. In the future, we hope to create mechanisms by which incubates can apply for certain grants to support their stay at the incubator. In occasional meritorious cases, the Venture Center may agree to defer compensation from the start-ups against milestones or even services in lieu of equity. But since the incubator needs to become self sustaining over a period of time, we will have to be selective in allowing deferred payments. Indyvation: Does a startup company have to take all your services or just use one service like say a hot desk or just use the board room for few meetings? All services at the incubator have been modularized. The start-up can choose the modules that they would like to use as per their needs. They can choose from among the options available. Indyvation: So Dr. Premnath, what's the big vision behind this center? Will we see one or two world beating small companies with breakthrough technologies in a next 4-5 years? Dr. Premnath: The vision of Venture Center is to be the organisation that will be credited with creating, shaping and sustaining a �Pune cluster� of innovative technology businesses with a significant economic impact regionally, nationally and globally within the next 20 years. What I would love to see is at least a few innovative technology companies of global stature emerging from the incubator in fields related to chemical/ bio/ materials sciences � fields where India has a negligible presence today. I would love to see these companies making a significant impact on the greatest problems of this century relating to human health, food, energy, environment and materials. Indyvation: How do you see NCL students and alumni leveraging the venture center? How do you plan to bring NCL's technology to market through the venture center? Dr. Premnath: The creation of the Venture Center has already inspired the creation of an active student club called the NCL Technology & Entrepreneurship Club (http://ncltec.blogspot.com/ ). This year also saw a record number of applications by NCL students for the IIM-B run technology entrepreneurship course for PhD students at CSIR labs. We are also seeing companies started by NCL alumni showing interest in the incubator; we already housing one company founded by an NCL alumnus. (By the way, we define alumni broadly to include anybody who has been associated with NCL as a student, temporary or regular staff at some time in their career.) We also expect that the business incubator will actually create new avenues for NCL staff to take their ideas to fruition. Since one of the most satisfying things for any scientist or engineer is to see his ideas benefiting society as products or services, we also think the incubator will serve a much greater purpose of drawing to NCL the best of talent. The NCL incubator is also a trend setter for many other research labs in India who are trying to emulate the model now. The Venture Center is actually an important component of NCL�s larger plan of looking at technology innovation in a more holistic way. In parallel to the Venture Center effort, NCL has been gradually integrating various activities relating to technology innovation under the NCL Innovations umbrella where we shall seek to energize the creation of technology ideas, the journey to proof of concept and then to prototype stage, IP protection and finally commercialization through licensing, business incubation or public-private partnerships. In this mosaic of sub-systems to taking ideas to the market, business incubation through the Venture center is an important part � an idea whose time has come. We are currently discussing some licenses which could include an incubation component. Indyvation: Dr. Premnath, we wish you and NCL the very best in your future efforts to promote innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity through the Venture Center. Dr. Premnath: Thank you.

Govt May Allow Professors To Promote Startup Companies

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00 +0530

Government is thinking of allowing professors to become startup founders and pickup equity stakes. A cabinet note is being circulated for this purpose. Right now, most government institutes don't allow professors to invest their time and skill as equity in a startup company.

Source: Economic Times

India's Hottest Startus As Per Business Today Magazine

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00 +0530

Business Today magazine is listing India's hottest startups. Here is a quick liste of the same:

		Website
Startup Name	Business Concept
Sresta Natural Bioproducts	Organic Food
Bigtec Labs	Hepatitis B Diagnosis
Zero Stock Retail	Closthing Retail Stores with No Inventory
Stempeutics	Stem cell research
iXiGO	Google of Travel Search in India
Lords Of Odds	Prediction Markets
Ikya	HR Services
iViz	Network Computer Security
3DSOC	3-D Image Compression
Premedia Global	Publishing Outsourcing

Source: Business Today Website

CSIR's NCL Patents and Licenses Sevelamer Process to US Vitamins

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00 +0530

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) obtained a US patent on a novel process to make Sevelamer, a polymer that is used in treatment of excess phosphate in body. Chronic renal failure results in excess body phosphate. US Vitamins Ltd(USV) had mandated CSIR's Pune based National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) to invent an alternative process to make the sevelamer polymer. USV had the first option to obtain license this process. USV decided to get a license for NCL for this technology and the patent.

Source: Business Line

Padamshree Award To Canadian Prof. Joseph Hulse

Sun, 4 May 2008 00:00 +0530

India has declared awarding of Padamshree, one of the top civilian honors in India, to Canadian food scientist Prof. Joseph Hulse. Prof. Hulse first came to India in 1962 to offer Canadian cooperation in the establishment of the International Food Technology Training Centre, Mysore. He has thereafter been a frequent visitor to India. Prof. Hulse's work is a lifetime spent on researching food and nutrition.
Source: India Daily

Punetech.com Tracks Pune's Technology Development

Tue, 1 Apr 2008 00:00 +0530

Puntech.com tracks development of technology in Pune. PuneTech describes itself as "There is a lot of really interesting software technology work going on in Pune. Unfortunately most people (including people in Pune) don�t know about this. PuneTech.com has been created with an intent to bring together in one place all information about interesting software technology in Pune - the companies, the products, the people, and thetechnologies." The site is managed by Navin Kabra. It is important to have focussed local and regional sites that provide a meeting ground for technical people to know what other efforts are going on in their city.

PuneTech.com

Indian Pharma May Use Bangladesh to Overcome Product Patents

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00 +0530

Indian pharmaceutical companies may use Bangladesh as a base to circumvent product patent laws in India. Bangladesh, including several other developing countries have until 2016 to update their patent laws. [ Business Standard]

Indyvation believes that apart from product patents WTO should create common a drug pricing mechanism where a "National Fair Price" of a medicine is determined based on the GDP and purchasing capacity of the people of a given country. The drug makers should be granted product patents too, but they cannot charge more than the National Fair Price, which should include all taxes, profits and distribution costs too. On one hand developing countries cannot allow drug companies to make runaway profits on patented products, they have to respect that inventing new drugs cost money. Further, why are developing countries heavily taxing pharmaceutical sector if they really want medicines to be cheap? What developing countries can offer are sales volumes. With fair pricing, lot many more people will be able to afford patented medicines and companies would make good profits too. Drugs are overpriced in developed countries like USA because of artificially inflated fees charged by health care organizations which in turn are fed by insurance companies. To break this vicious cycle, a fair price will help all participants to work just fine. Such regulation in many industries is well known. But here, we are fighting doctrine wars while patients are dying. In India, where activists outnumbers inventors, little thought is given to the uselessness of this debate of product patents in its current form.

IIT Kharagpur To Unveil Male Contraceptive At Indac 2008 Conference

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00 +0530

IIT Kharagpur has developed a new male non-surgical contraceptive that retains effect over 10 years. IIT Kharagpur plans to unveil this and other 50 inventions on April 5 and 6, 2008 as part of its "IndAc 2008" programme. The inventions to be made public include a drug for prostrate cancer made from nano materials. Other inventions to be made public are: (1) an artificial substitute for a human heart which is made of polymer and is powered by battery, (2)a heart sound analyser, (3) a knee joint simulator, (4) packaged coconut water, (5) technology to manufacture curd powder, (6) a device for cryogenically freezing fish, meat, fruits and vegetables and (7) a device for cryogenic grinding of spices, vegetables and foodgrain.

Source:Business Standard Article, IIT Kharagpur InDac Website

MIT Helps Improve Jaipur Prosthetic Foot

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:00 +0530

MIT's mechanical engineering students have helped improve the famous Jaipur prosthetic foot. Jaipur foot is given free by Jaipur Foot Organization. MIT students travelled to Rajasthan to help improve the prosthetic. Their improvement will help in creating a longer lasting foot. Further, the students have designed a system that doesn't require electricity in assembling the foot.
Source: DNA India

Prof. Amar Bose in US Inventor's Hall of Fame

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00 +0530

Ex-MIT professor, Amar Bose, was recently inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame. Bose was a long-time professor at MIT. Bose's research into acoustics led to his founding the BOSE corporation, which creates premium audio equipment.
Source: Invent Now

A Car for Rs.11,000 from Ahemdabad School Students

Mon, 3 Mar 2008 00:00 +0530

A team of five students from Delhi Public School (DPS) and Anand Niketan School in Ahemdabad have created a "car". The cost of the car is mere Rs. 11,000 because it uses junkyard equipment. For example, the fuel tank is a used hot water geyser from a neighbor! The student team included Aditya Sen, Debanshu Samanta, Purna Singh, Sukanya Rajgopal and Jaidev Singh. Their next project is an eco-friendly four wheeler with solar panels.
Rediff

Mistral - An Emerging Embedded Systems Company

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00 +0530

Mistral Solutions, is an embedded systems company headed by Anees Ahmed. Mistral won the Nasscom Innovation Award in 2007. It was started a decade ago by 16 engineers and has grown to 260 employees today. It has had 10 straight years of growth.
Source: Rediff.com; Mistral Solutions

India to Legislate Patenting of Government Inventions Per Science Mag

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 00:00 +0530

Science Magazine is reporting that Indian government is likely to have a legislation for patenting research results from government sponsored laboratories. Thanks to Dr. Premnath of NCL for bringing this to our notice. Indyvation hopes that it is an enabling legislation to promote invention in government laboratories rather than a penalizing one.
Science Mag

Honeywell Nobel Interactive Studio

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00 +0530

Honeywell, a world leader in materials, senors and allied fields, brings a wonderful intiative of Nobel prize winners speaking about many things. They call this the Honeywell Nobel Interactive Studio. Many Nobel prize winners's video with them talking are available. Worth a watch!

Sources: Rediff.com; Honeywell Nobel Interactive Science Site

Marico Innovation Foundation's Awards

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:00 +0530

Marico, a large oil producer of oil based products, has launched a Marico Innovation Foundation. The foundation has initiated innovation awards. They describe their mission as "The Innovation for India Awards 2007 aims to recognize the greatest innovations to come out of India in the recent past - innovations that have positively impacted our lives and have at their core a great idea coupled with a unique insight."
Eligibility: Any Indian companies/companies based in India, social organizations and government bodies that have successfully nurtured a brilliant idea, made them work and brought them to market in the past five years will be eligible to participate. Applications for the awards are being invited till January 5, 2008. This will be followed by a rigorous three-stage selection process with a 12 member jury comprising some of India�s most respected and eminent personalities.

XCyton Diagnostics Develops DNA Chip for Eye Diseases

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:00 +0530

XCyton Diagnostics has brought out a DNA macro chip to diagnose a variety of eye infection pathogenes. Dr B.V. Ravi Kumar, reported that XCyton has created a Rs 3-crore facility in Bangalore to develop a range of DNA-based diagnostic products. The current method is to use a microbial culture to detect pathogenes. However, XCyton has exploited PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) method to develop this diagnostic kit.

Source:
Business Line

Indian Patent Office becomes ISA and IPEA for the PCT System

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:00 +0530

Indian patent office will now be an approved ISA (International Search Authority) and IPEA (International Preliminary Examining Authority) under the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) that is administered by UN's WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).

The Minister for Commerce and Industries, Mr Kamal Nath, remarked to the press that, �The recognition of India as an ISA and IPEA puts India in a coveted league of only 15 nations and organisations currently recognised at a global level".

Source: Business Line

MIT Returned Indian Vistakula Invents a Heating/Cooling Jacket

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00 +0530

Business Line is reporting about a heating/cooling jacket invention. A lot of Indian students go to US to study engineering. Their aim being (mostly) to get a green-card in US and settle down into a mundane middle class life, which is a personal choice and we do not object to it at all. However, Mr Kranthi Kiran Vistakula tread a different path. After doing a year of studies in bio-medical engineering from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in US, he chose to take a break to do inventing! He has designed an active heating/cooling jacket that has many applications. One use is for soldiers in battlefield which is why US and Indian armies are actively studying Mr. Vistakula's invention.

Heating/Cooling Jacket Invention

The young 23-year old Mr. Vistakula used a $20,000 scholarship he received to creat this jacket. He describes his effort as "I wanted to work on user-controlled heating/cooling apparel as we need to change over into protective suits whenever we step out in Boston. I wanted to invent simpler clothing for dealing with varying temperatures". IIT Delhi is helping Mr.Vistakula in creating a real-world product. Mr. Vistakula has filed a US patent application and is actively looking into filing an Indian patent application.

Sources:
Hindu Businessline Article

Dr Thannickal from Kerala Part of Parkinson Disease Research Breakthrough

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:00 +0530

Dr Thomas C Thannickal from Kerala is part of a major Parkinson breakthrough. Parkinson is a nervous system disorder that progressively hurts motor skills and speech (Wikipedia). Dr. Thannickal's research is described as "Parkinson�s patients have a dramatic, degenerative loss of hypocretin and melanin-concentrating hormone cells, a type of brain cells located in the hypothalamus. This is considered to be one of the most important findings in the past 200 years and has opened new paths for diagnostic techniques and treatments".

Links/Source:
Indian Express; Wikipedia

Novartis Judgment from Madras High Court

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00 +0530

The Honorable Madras High Court has opined on the Novartis case. The opinion is available from Lawyers Collective website (a left oriented group) here: Link . Indyvation respectfully submits that this case should have never taken the route that it did. Novartis should never have challenged a rejection of patent on the basis that amended patent act doesn't comply with a treaty. Courts in India don't rule on that. Foreign policy is an executive matter. Novartis did achieve publicity, but at what cost? Their ultimate goal properly should be to strengthen the Indian patent system, but they created theatre. The best case for incremental invention is what Indian companies are filing for patents in US and abroad, those inventions are dosage variations, injections into oral form and so on. The same Indian companies don't want patents for incremental invention (of course when filed by rivals or others) because AIDS drugs is a lucrative revenue source!

Electricity from Plastic Waste - Indian Inventor's 6 Patents

Thu, 5 Jul 2007 00:00 +0530

Alka Umesh Zadgaonkar has obtained six Indian patents on technology for converting plastic waste into electricity. Plastic waste is a huge environmental problem because ordinarily plastic either doesn't degrade or takes many years to degrade. Economic Times reports that "Mrs Zadgaonkar, who developed the technology for producing fuel from plastic waste, owns the patent for her invention. While working as the head of chemistry department in Raisoni Engineering College in Nagpur, Mrs Zadgaonkar invented the new method to reuse the hydrocarbons in plastic. On a December morning almost a decade ago, when 300 gm of plastic waste she was processing in her college lab broke down into a dark brown liquid. It took time to reach a happy confirmation that the derivative was indeed liquid hydrocarbons. After years of refining processes, she tested the fuel in bikes and proved successful,� said the official."
Asian Electronics, a Mumbai based company, and Singapore�s Enviro-Hub Holdings have joined forces to build four power plants of 8 mega watt (MW) based on Zadgaonkar's technology. The plants will be fired by the liquid hydrocarbons produced from plastic waste. They have created a joint venture to effect this collaboration.

Links/Source:
Economic Times

World Bank Prize for Rural Pedal Power Invention

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00 +0530

Indian Express (Print, 25-6-07) is reporting about Vidnyan Ashram, Pabal (Pune vicinity) and Save Bombay Committee's pedal power invention. This invention won a country wide competition organized by the World Bank. The invention is described as a "Human Power Based Lighting Solution for Nomadic People'. It can generate power for four hours of lighting with just 30 minutes of cycle pedaling. Fifteen minutes of pedaling generates 10 Watts of power. The concept was created by Yogesh Kulkarni of Vidnyan Ashram, Harshad Kamdar and Dilip Sankarreddy, both of Save Bombay Committee. They used LED (Light Emitting Diodes) lamps that consume only 2 watts of energy per hour. The invention won a $20,000 prize and was selected among 20 other projects. Intrestingly, the inventors say that most nomads and tribals have mobile phones and they would like the invention to charge the mobile phones.

Sterlite Obtains US Patent No. 7,209,620

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:00 +0530

Sterlite Optical Technologies Ltd., announced that it has obtained US patent No. 7,209,620 for its. Sterlite DOF-LITE� (LEA) Single Mode Optical Fiber. The invention is described as "This dispersion-optimized fiber with higher spot area (Sterlite DOF-LITE� LEA) is specially designed for long haul, high data rate and multi wavelength transmission. Its unique profile design optimizes Effective area, Dispersion slope and Chromatic dispersion - the three critical fiber parameters that affect performance in DWDM system at C and L bands. The patented product is capable of reducing the fiber non-linear effect like four-wave mixing for better DWDM performance in the wavelength region of 1530 to 1565 nm (C-band) and 1565 to 1625 nm (L-band)."
Sterlite mentions that last year it obtained six patents.

Links/Sources:
Newswire

Anyone Can Invent...

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 00:00 +0530

Can anyone invent? We at Indyvation.com think that is true! This heart warming story of a school bus driver inventing a space glove that can be used by NASA just shows that. We do not care if this story is not about Indian invention, because we respect invention before anything else. Peter Homer's most recent job was being a school bus driver. He has an aerospace background (education never hurts!) and took on a challenge of designing an improved space glove as part of a competition. He won the NASA's $200,000 US Astronaut Glove Challenge by designing a unique glove.

Links / Sources
CBC.CA Story

Feedback Please!

Mon, 28 May 2007 00:00 +0530

Hi, We need feedback from you. We have been running Indyvation since 6 odd months, but we haven't heard much from the readers. Please tell us what you would like to us to cover, what you liked and more importantly what did you not like about Indy. You can write to us at indyvation@gmail.com Thanks Editorial Team

Design for the Other 90 Per Cent - Exhibition

Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00 +0530

"Design for the Other 90%" is an exhibition focusing on design for poor of the world, the 90% who cannot afford many things. The exhibition is on at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum through September 23, 2007. Cooper-Hewitt is located at 2 East 91st Street New York, NY 10128. The exhibition is described the organizers as below: "Of the world�s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for this �other 90%.� Through partnerships both local and global, individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world�s poor and marginalized." Indyvation truly believes that all invention, innovation and ideas should flower. Rural or poor population is not to be ignored. They are inventors as well as consumers in their own right. Is it any wonder that we have a flower in our logo!

Links/Sources:
Exhibition Design for the Other 90% ; Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; WSJ Story and Interview

Indian Advantage: Cover Story in Chemical & Engineering News

Tue, 22 May 2007 00:00 +0530

Chemical and Engineering News has a current cover story titled "The Indian Advantage". The story details how the Indian pharmaceutical industry is growing. An interesting nugget apart from the usual songs about cost advantages,etc, is about China. The article says that China opened its patent protection for drugs five years ahead of India. Hence, many multinational have chosen to open their own labs in China. In India, MNCs mostly chose to outsource the work.

Links/Source:
Chemical & Engineering News

Dr.Keki Gharda: Innovation Genius

Sun, 13 May 2007 00:00 +0530

Rediff.com is carrying a nice article on Dr. Keki Gharda. He is the majority owner of Gharda Chemicals, a chemical company that deals in agrochemicals and polymers. Dr. Gharda is 77 years old but is all set to create another company that will be knowledge intensive. He is also starting an institute that will be an University eventually. Dr. Gharda has excellent sense of humor and manages to live very frugally despite his wealth. He is widely read and openly proclaims of his genius.

Dr. Gharda built Gharda Chemicals from scratch. He beat MNC (Multinational Companies) such as Hoechst, Sandoz and others by producing products they made at cut-rate prices.

Links/Sources:
Rediff Article; Gharda Chemicals

ISRO's First Commercial Launch: PSLV Puts Italian Satellite in Space

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

ISRO today successfully launched a 352kg Italian satellite AGILE into space using its workhourse rocket PSLV. This is ISRO's first full fledged commercial space launch. The PSLV C-8 rocket "successfully launched the 352 kg Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE, into a 550 km circular orbit, inclined at an angle of 2.5 deg to the equator", says the ISRO press release. The flight also launched for India an "Advanced Avionics Module (AAM), weighing 185 kg, to test advanced launch vehicle avionics systems like mission computers, navigation and telemetry systems". ISRO has launched PSLV successfully 10 times in a row. PSLV will also launch India's moon mission in form of a moon orbiter Chandrayan-I.

Source: ISRO Press Release

Links/Sources:
ISRO Press Release

Vikram Sarabhai: A Life - Amrita Shah

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

In a world where the people of the old are forgotten easily, why do people like Indian president Dr. Abdul Kalam recall repeatedly a single name: Dr. Vikram Sarabhai? A builder of men and institutions, Dr. Sarabhai created ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization), on his own started privately the PRL (Physical Research Laboratory), took over the work of Department of Atomic Energy after Dr. Bhabha's death, and played a yeoman's role in establishing IIM, Ahemdabad. Any of these achievements is sufficient for an ordinary human. But Dr. Sarabhai was extraordinary, to put it mildly. Born in super-rich Sarabhai family that owned textile mills and later on chemical and pharmaceutical factories, he didn't need to do more than run a family business. He rather became a physicist who got a Cambridge PhD with his work focusing on cosmic rays. But this was only a start.

Further review in the full article. Please click the link below for the full article.

Ayurvedic Medicine Triphala Found Effective Against Pancreatic Cancer in Experiments

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

Tripahla, an ayurvedic medicine, is found to be effective against pancreatic cancer. Wikipedia defines Tripahala as "an Ayurvedic herbal formula consisting of equal parts Amalaki (Emblica officinalis), Bibhitaki (Terminalia belerica), and Haritaki (Terminalia chebula)". Tripahala's anti-cancer properties were known, but specific application for pancreatic cancer is a recent event. Sanjay Srivastava, an assistant professor in pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh, had done this recent research. He presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Los Angeles. He states, �Triphala triggered the cancerous cells to die off and significantly reduced the size of tumours without causing any toxic side effects,�

Links/Sources:
Indian Express; Triphala @ Wikipedia

IIT Chennai Develops Nanotech Water Filter

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

IIT Madras has developed a novel nanotech material based water filter. IIT Madras has developed the nanotech material used in the filter element; and Eureka Forbes will market the the whole water filter unit. IIT Madras claims that they have a patent on the filter and that this is the first time in the world that nanotech materials have been used in a water filter.

Links/Source:
The Hindu Online

Lupin Earns 26.7 Million US$ from Patent Sale to French Company

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

Indian companies having to pay royalties for "technology transfer" from west to east is old news. Here is new news, Indian pharmaceutical company Lupin received 20 million euros (26.7 million US dollars) for a patent deal with Laboratories Servier of France. The patent deal involves sale of patent rights and associated intellectual property.

Links/Sources:
Reuters

IISc joins Texas Instruments Premier University Research Network

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

IISc (Indian Institute of Science), Bangalore joins Texas Instruments' (TI) network of premier leadership universities that conduct collaborative research. IISc will be first such premier research university outside the US in TI's network. IIsc stands to gain $400,000 over next five years with initial funds already stand transferred. Focus of research at IISc would be wireless, medical, industrial and other markets. TI happens to be one of the first multinationals , particularly in electronics and hardware, that started large scale operations in India. TI has been in India since 1985.

Links/Source:
CXO Today Website

Wockhardt Appeals Rejection of its Indian Patent Application

Fri, 6 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

Wockhardt is appealing a rejection of its patent application by the Indian patent office. Wockhardt rejected application concerns "nadifloxacin, a topical antibiotic sold under the brand name Nadoxin". Wockhardt had filed an EMR (Exclusive Marketing Rights) application which was subsequently covered by a regular patent application. Cipla challenged the patent application for Nadoxin last year under the pre-grant opposition procedure. The patent office had rejected Wockhardt's regular patent application arguing that the invention is now a part of public domain. Hence, the appeal.
Links:
Myiris

C-DAC to Unveil a Bio-informatics SuperComputer

Tue, 3 Apr 2007 00:00 +0530

C-DAC plans to unveil a supercomputer dedicated to performing bio-informatics jobs. �The blueprint for the new supercomputer has been finalized. The machine would have a computing capacity of 1.5 terraflops and would be integrated with the genome grid that is currently in progress,� Rajendra Joshi, coordinator with bioinformatics group of C-DAC said in a statement that THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS published on 7th February 2007.

Links:
PR Minds

Gangagen Bets on Phage Therapy

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Gangagen, a biotechnology company based in India, Canada and US, is trying a novel applications of a techique called phages. In phage therapy a beneficial virus is used to treat bacterial infection. Phages were an active area of research in former USSR and eastern europe, but there were several immunological challenges that needed to be overcome. Several bacteria have or are on the way to develop resistance to known antibiotics. It is a huge challenge to come up with weapons against drug-resistant bacteria. Gangagen thinks phages is the way to go against drug resistant bacteria, and it has got funding from investors to do that. Gangagen is targeting human and veterniary applications of phage technologies.

Gangagen states that "GangaGen has received the first broad US patent covering its proprietary technology entitled � Lysin-Deficient Bacteriophages with Reduced Immunogenicity � (Patent No.: US 6,896,882 B2 ), issued on May 24, 2005 and the second patent entitled � Incapacitated Whole-Cell Immunogenic Compositions � (Patent No.: US 6,913,753 B2) issued on July 5, 2005. These two important patents grew out of the pioneering work carried out by GangaGen scientists at its R & D Facility in Bangalore to address the perceived and real limitations of bacteriophages as therapeutic agents.". Recent Businessworld issue is carrying a story about Gangagen too.

Links:
Gangagen's Site; Businessworld

Sri lanka is Concerned About Intellectual Property

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Sri Lanka is very concerned about lack of information and misue of intellectual property. Dr D M Karunaratne, Director General of the NIPO, said that "People don�t understand the adverse effects of intellectual property theft on national creativity, tax revenue, and even public health,� , speaking at the launch of a public campaign to protect intellectual property last week. ". It is very encouraging to know the India's neighbors are concerned about intellectual property.

Links:
Financial Times Link

Ideawicket

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Ideawicket.com is a new website that encourages open and collaborative invention. Ideawicket is a platform to share ideas, innovations and inventions (incidentally all three are the gospel truths that Indyvation.com lives by!). There are many interesting things being shared on Ideawicket as of now. For example, an improved phone bill, a new car design from a Polish inventor and so on. It is interesting that this site is promoted by an Indian company headed by Amar Aujla an alumni of SRCC and FMS, Delhi University.

INDYVATION CAUTION: A public disclosure of your invention (e.g., on a website) triggers a patent clock. You may want to consult a patent attorney before disclosing something on Ideawicket to protect your intellectual property rights.

Links:
Ideawicket.com; Webyantra Blog

Sam Pitroda of Knowledge Commission Recommends a New University Patent Law

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

National Knowledge Commission has recommended a new patent law provision for universities as stated by its Chairman, Sam Pitroda. This law will give universities rights over patents and inventions coming out of government funded research.Sam Pirtroda is the legendary person who brought about the telecom revolution in India through establishing C-DOT (Center for Development of Telematics).

Indyvation doubts whether this law will ever be enacted because of Indian government's attitude that it must have overbearing control over anything that receives government funds. This is due to a trust deficit on part of government and also the fact that there are any number of swindlers out to take the government for a ride.

Links:
Rediff.com Article

India's ISRO Puts INSAT-4B Satellite into Orbit Successfully

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

ISRO successfully put the INSTAT 4B satellite into its orbit. INSAT 4B was launched into space using European Ariane-5 ECA launch vehicle of Arianespace. Details of the satellite are in the full-text version of this article. The satellite is geared for massive future increase in DTH (Direct to Home) television broacasting.

Links:
ISRO Press Release

Hovercraft Inventor Colonel Vivek Mundkur from Pune

Thu, 8 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Colonel Vivek Mundkur is an adventurous man. He has setup a hang gliding record and built his own home single handedly at Khadakwasla near Pune. But more interestingly, he has designed a hovercraft. Earlier, he had designed an airboat in 2001. A hovercraft travels over land, water or any surface that can sustain an air cushion. A propellor fan generates the air cushion over which the hovercraft glides, hence it is aslo known as an Air Cushion Vehicle (ACV). He even sustained a major injury when his hand got tangled with the propeller of the hovercraft, yet he did not give up and continued his inventive quest. Colonel Mundkur is patenting his design. He attributes his motivation to previous failures of designing a hovercraft in India. Indyvation salutes Colonel Mundkur's invention and his pioneering spirt.

Links:
Times of India (Print, 8 March 007, page 1); Wikipedia Hovercraft

New Water Filter in India Based On Auburn Uni's Prof. Dave Worley�s N-halamine technology

Wed, 7 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

http://www.ocm.auburn.edu/news_releases/waterfilter.html

Cricket Stock Exchange From IIT Roorkee and IIM Students

Wed, 7 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Several news websites are reporting about a Cricket Stock Exchange launched by IIT Roorkee and IIM Ahemdabad students. The exchange is launched in the backdrop of the real Cricket World Cup 2007 being held in West Indies. Right now the virtual cricket stock exchange is in an IPO phase with stocks for players being bought with virtual cash. You get a million of virtual cash units when you signup. About 3,000 people have signed up. Indyvation thinks this is a pretty neat innovation for cricket in India, though fantasy sports teams is a years old concept around the world. Link to their site is below.

Links:
; Cricket Stock Exchange Daily Times

Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program

Fri, 2 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Lockheed Martin, a leading US defence contractor, IC2 Institute of Texas University, and FICCI are organizing an Indian innovation program. The program is designed to "help Indian innovators with promising early stage technologies accelerate into markets in the United States and other locations around the world". Participation is FREE. You can apply at the website link below. For more information call Manasi Shankar at +91-11-32404338 or Gurpreet Kohli at +91-11-32983791.

Links:
India Innovates Program Website; Source: Business Standard (Print) 2 March 2007, pg. 3

Seminar on Commericializing Chemical Technologies in Mumbai

Fri, 2 Mar 2007 00:00 +0530

Indian Chemical Council (ICC) is organizing a two day seminar on "Commercialisation of Indian Technologies in Chemical Sector: Successes & New Opportunities" on 16-17 March 2007 at World Trade Center. For details call ICC at +91-22-22047649, or email at icmawro@vsnl.com. ICC website link is below.

Links:
ICC Website; Source: Business Standard (Print) 2 March 2007, pg. 3

India Celebrates National Science Day (Feb. 28)

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

India is celebrating National Science Day on 28 February. The day is to mark Sir C.V. Raman's discovery of "Raman Effect". Raman Effect showed non-elastic scattering of light. Sir C. V. Raman (1888-1970) won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his work on "the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him". This day falls at the end of National Science Week.

Ethypharm Out-licenses Ondansetron to Shantha Biotechnics

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Ethypharm, a French pharmaceutical company, has licensed Shantha Biotechnics to market its anti-nausea drug Ondansetron. The news item states, "Ondansetron is used to prevent nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, certain radiotherapies, and the prevention of postoperative nausea or vomiting".

Links:
Source: The Hindu

Teraflop Speed 80 Core Chip Co-developed at Intel's India R&D Center

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Intel is reporting that it has developed the world's first teraflop speed eighty core chip. This is a research chip and not ready for immediate production. The teraflop chip consumes only 62 watts of power. This chip was co-developed by Intel's India Development Center (IIDC). IIDC collaborated with research lab at Oregon in the US with the 20-member Indian research team headed by engineering manager Vasantha that developed the chip in a record 20 months. It is reported that "The engineering team of IIDC contributed about 50 percent of the work consisting of logic, circuit and physical design, while the Oregon centre undertook integration and fabrication of the chip at the company's fab in Ireland."

Images from Intel Press Kits

Links:
Source: India PRWire; Intel

NIF Award for Water Carrying Vest Jacket That Eases Burden of Rural Women

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

T R Neelkantan, Balaji T K, Kunal Kumar and Arun Rosh, all of whom are students at the SRM Engineering College, Chennai, received the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) fourth National Award from the President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, a distinguished rocket scientist earlier in his career. The SRM Engineering College students have designed a water carrying vest (in a jacket form) that can be worn. In rural areas in India, many women have to carry water in utensils on their heads for few kilometer long distances. The innovative invention of this water carrying vest will ease the burden of such women. The vest can carry upto 20 liters of water and is balanced so that load is distributed proportionately. Indyvation congratulates the students and wishes them all the very best.

NIF has performed a great role by bring small and rural innovators to forefront by helping them commercialize and popularize their inventions. Prof. Anil Gupta is the executive vice-president of National Innovation Foundation (NIF), located in Ahemdabad, is an autonomous body setup by the Department of Science and Technology of Govt. of India.

Water Jacket Receives NIF Award

Links:
Source: Indian Express; National Innovation Foundation

Mashelkar Recommends Withdrawl of His Report on Patent Issues

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Dr. Mashelkar, a member of the committee that suggested that it would not be TRIPS compliant to limit patenting only to New Chemical Entities (NCE) and not incremental inventions, is recommending that his report be withdrawn. The controversy is surrounding a paragraph in the report that is copied verbatim from Shamnad Basheer's report but is not attributed to Mr. Basheer.

Links:
Indian Express Report

ISIS- IIT Roorkee and Geodesic's Business Plan Competition for Entrepreneurs

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

IT News Online is reporting that IIT Roorkee is partnering with Geodesic Information Systems Ltd to hold 'Isis - The BPlan Competition'. It is an entrepreneurship competition. Apart from cash prizes, the winners will get access to mentoring and venture capital. The last date is 25th February 2007. Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC) of IIT Roorkee which is holding this competition has kept it open for all university students in India. Competition websie link is below.

Links:
Competition Website; IIT Roorkee; Geodesic

ST Micro To Create Electroncis Labs at BITS Pilani and IIT Delhi

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Engineering Times India is reporting about ST Microelectronics, a leading European semiconductor company, collaborating with BITS, Pilani and IIT, Delhi, both very reputed engineering schools. ST Microelectronics will sponsor laboratories in both these institutions. The research will cover areas such as "analogue and mixed-signal design in the area of VLSI, image and speech pattern recognition, sensory organ modelling and digital data protection in algorithm research, along with generic IP blocks for embedded solutions".

Links:
Engineering Times India; BITS Pilani; IIT Delhi ST Microelectronics

Google Invests in Early State Venture Funds, Erasmic and Seedfund

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Google, the dominant search engine company, has invested in early stage venture capital funds - Erasmic and Seedfund for early stage venture capital investing in Indian startups. Google has correctly voiced a concern that despite large investments in India (e.g., by FII), there is still very little venture capital available for real (and read risky) early stage ventures. With Google's financial might (last it earned over 1 billion dollars in profit in a quarter!), early stage ventures in India will have a higher chance of success through their Erasmic and Seedfund funding.

Google Invests in Early Stage Venture Funds in India

Links:
Google ; Erasmic Venture Fund ; Seedfund (Mumbai based) ; Source: CIOL

Fledge - A Hybrid Vehicle built by DCE Studients Wins International Award

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Hybrid Vehicle Technology has emerged as a real solution to the growing Energy Crisis. Apart from providing a relief in terms of lesser fuel consumed, it helps in reducing traffic pollution including harmful emissions. Evaluating the need for hybrids in India, a team of seven students from DCE (Delhi College of Engineering) conceived the idea of designing such a vehicle. This is a step in the development of alternative fuels technologies in the Indian Automobile sector. Their goal was to design and develop a customized hybrid electric car that would be economical, efficient and easy-to-drive -- a car that would become the necessity of tomorrow.

The DCE team designed a special drive-train for the Indian traffic conditions, and tested its performance. On obtaining encouraging results, theyplanned to move ahead with the our indigenous concept and fabricate an entire vehicle from a scratch. With support from the DCE institution, we worked towards participating in the annual green car festival, TourdeSol Championship 2006, which was to be held in USA. Working with limited funds and resources, managing academics and the project, they could only visualize their prime incentive for developing the hybrid vehicle - 'Fledge'. This was the first team ever, to participate in the competition from the entire Asia-Pacific region. Successfully showcasing the car they rankedfirst in the "ALTERNATIVE FUEL AND HYBRID VEHICLE CATEGORY - STUDENT DIVISION" category of the TourdeSol competition.

Budget To Decide R&D Tax Benefit Under S.35(2AB) of I.Tax Law

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

The Income Tax Act S.35(AB) that allows companies 150 per cent weighted tax deduction. This tax benefit is scheduled to expire on 31 March 2007. Now all eyes are set on the budget that the finance minister will present in March. The budget may decide to renew the tax cuts for R&D. The report in Economic Times states that "While Indian companies spend 5% of their turnover for R&D activities, globally companies spend around 15% for the same". This expenditure is increasing at the CAGR of 38 per cent.
Source: (Click)

Crompton Greaves R&D Center Celebrates 30th Birthday

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Crompton Greaves is a leading electrical equipment company in India. CG's Global R&D center is thirty years old. Interestingly, "Crompton Greaves has become synonymous with electricity in India. In fact, the first unit of electricity was generated on a "Crompton Dynamo" at Calcutta in 1899".
Source:Indiaprwire

IISc Announces DBT Postdoctoral Biotech Scholarships

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has announced award of Dept. of Biotechnology (DBT) Postdoctoral scholarships in Biotechnology and Life Sciences. More information can be found in India Express (Print, Page 3, 13 February 2007) or at IISc DBT Scholarship Site

C-DAC to Unveil 5-7 Teraflop Supercomputer

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

C-DAC (Center for Develoment of Advanced Compting) is unveiling a 5-7 teraflop parallel super computer. It will be located at the National Param Supercomputing Facility in the Pune University Campus. C-DAC indicates that the supercomputer will be used in oil exploration, space, aircraft design, structures and meteorology. Indyvation thinks that C-DAC, while it maintains its lead in parallel computing, should venture out into other high performance computing architectures.

Source: Indian Express (Print, PuneNewsline Suppl., 13 February 2007)

Robocon 2007 Robotics Competition at MIT Pune

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Doordarshan and MIT Pune, an engineering college, will hold the Robocon 2007 competition. Engineering students compete in Robocon competition to think originally to create unique robotic machines. Winning team goes to Robocon 2007 finals in Vietnam in August 2007.
You can find more information at the Robocon India 2007 Website (Click)

India Beats China in the INSEAD Innovation Index

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

World Business Live and INSEAD, a leading business school, have ranked countries for their innovative capabilities. USA, of course, scores at the top. Good news is that India (3.57) ranks higher than China (3.21) in the INSEAD Innovation Index. Do contrast this news item with that of earlier one which predicts that India will need 163 years to catchup with China. The top 10 countries are below:


Rank	Country	Score
1	USA	5.80
2	Germany	4.89
3	U.K.	4.81
4	Japan	4.48
5	France	4.32
6	Switzerland	4.16
7	Singapore	4.10
8	Canada	4.06
9	Netherlands	3.99
10	Hong Kong	3.97

INSEAD Innovation Index India's 3.57 wins over China's 3.21

Source: World Business

India Needs 163 Years to Catchup with China's Science & Tech

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Indian media, politicians and even intellectuals are busy in self-congratulating themselves over their phenomenal economic progress in recent years. Chief scientist Gangan Prathap, who works at Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation in Bangalore, has estimated that India will take at least 163 years to match China�s research workforce of 850,000 even if Beijing were to freeze the number today! Yes, 163 years to catchup with China and that too assuming that China will not do anything during all these years. India publishes less than two percent of research papers in the world, this is a shameful number for a nation of one billion people. It is the same old story of bureaucracy strangling research.
Source: Telegraph India

Venture Finance in India - Vishnu Varshney

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Vishnu Varshney is the President and CEO of Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd (GVFL). His monograph titled "Venture Finance in India" is reviewed in Hindu Business Line. GVFL is promoted by Gujarat Industrial and Investment Corporation and has thirty private companies as its supporters. GVFL's initial corpus was of Rs. 24 crores and has grown up to Rs. 130 crore. Varshey shares his general thoughts about venture finance.

College Level Resarch Grants of 5.25 Crore From Pune University

Fri, 9 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Pune University will become the first University in India to provide research grants for 327 affiliated colleges. Until now, such research grants were available only for University level research. Pune University Vice-Chancellor and noted economist, Dr. Narendra Jadhav, along with Pandit Vidyasagar announced this grant corpus of Rs. 5.25 Crore spread over two years. Individual grant quantum will range from Rs. 75,000 to Rs. 3,00,000 and will be equitably distributed to science, commerce, arts and other streams of studies. Indyvation congratulates Pune University and Dr. Jadhav for this innovative step. Colleges, which are used to being degree mills, hopefully will seize these initiative and develop a research culture.

Mashelkar Committee Report on Indian Patent Law and TRIPS Issues

Thu, 8 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Mashelkar Committee Report is in news because of Novartis' suit in the Chennai High Court alleging that Indian Patent Law is not TRIPS compliant. The official title of the report is "Report of the Technical Expert Group on Patent Law Issues" and is dated December, 2006. Dr. Mashelkar was the Chairman of the committee and Prof. Govrdhan Mehta (IISc), Prof. Asis Dutta, Prof. Moolchand Sharma and Prof. N.R. Madhava Menon were other members of the committee. The committee considered two major questions:
(1) Whether it would be TRIPS compatible to limit the grant of patent for pharmaceutical substance to New Chemical Entity (NCE) or to New Medical Entity (NME) involving one or more inventive steps; and
(2) Whether it would be TRIPS compatible to exclude micro-organisms from patenting.

The key findings of the Mashelkar report are
(1) "... it would not be TRIPS compliant to limit granting patents for pharmaceutical substance to New Chemical Entities only. However, every effort must be made to provide drugs at affordable prices to the people of India." and
(2) " Excluding micro-organisms per se from patent protection would be violative of TRIPS Agreement. " (See Executive Summary section).

Download Mashelkar Committee Report in PDF Format here: (Click)

Rolls-Royce (RR) and IISc Collaborate For Aircraft Material Research

Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Rediff.com is reporting that Rolls Royce of UK, a giant in aircraft engine manufacturing, is collaborating with IISc (Indian Institute of Science), Bangalore, India and IIT, Mumbai to develop "self-actuating" materials for environment friendly aircraft engines. These flexible materials can change shape at a given temperature. Initial uses of such material seem to be noise-reduction and emission control leading to lighter, efficient and "greener" engines. Other than Rolls-Royce, IIT and IIsc, UK's Imperial College will join in the effort.

David Dye from Imperial College's department of materials and Upadrasta Ramamurty, from the Department of Metallurgy, IISc, will lead the effort. IISc will fund some studentships and so will Imperial College. Source: Rediff.com

Rolls-Royce and IISc Colloboration

Controversy Over Novartis' Glivec / Gleevec Case in Chennai HC

Thu, 1 Feb 2007 00:00 +0530

Novartis, a global drug major, is on a war path against activists who support cheaper drugs. The bone of contention is a case Novartis has filed in the Chennai (Madras) High Court in India. Novartis alleges that India's patent law provision that only allow patenting of new chemicals/medicines rather than mere new improvements of known compounds is violative of the TRIPS agreement. Novartis' challenge is based on its Glivec� / Gleevec� drug, a medicine that the company says is given free to 99% of patients in India. Interestingly, Novartis says this case is about protecting its IP and not blocking generic medicines because Novartis is world's No. 2 generics company! According to Novartis, even a generic version costs 2,100 times the average income in India.

According to activists, Novartis' action will increase the cost of medicines everywhere. Take MSF (Medicin Sans Frontieres), a respected international organization, for example. MSF contends that ": If Novartis wins the case and succeeds in getting the provision of Indian law changed to resemble patent laws in wealthy countries, patents may be granted in India as broadly as they are in wealthy countries. This will mean that fewer and possibly no generic versions of newer drugs will be able to be produced by Indian manufacturers during the patent terms of at least 20 years, and India will no longer be able to supply much of the developing world with cheap essential medicines."

Medicins Sans Frontieres' version of story is here: (Click)

Novartis' version of their story is here: (Click)

Only 2% Students In Vocational Education

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00 +0530

Business Standard (28 Jan 07, Print) is reporting that only 2 per cent of student population in the age group of 15 to 25 are enrolled in vocational education. This number translated into about 1.5 to 2 million students. This is very low if we are to move from an agricultural economy to even a semi-industrial economy. Not everyone can be a software engineer (and should not be too!). ASSOCHAM estimates India has 5,100 ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) that offer vocational courses like electrical technician, turning, fitting, welding, etc. Additionally India has 1,745 polytechnics that offer diploma level mini-engineering courses. To contrast, consider that China has 500,000 vocational education schools.

Vocational Schools: India (6,845) China (500,000)

Proto.in: Showcasing India's Entrepreneurial Spirit

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:00 +0530

Premier Event Showcasing India's Entrepreneurial Spirit

Event will take place on 20th & 21st January at Chennai.

PROTO.in (http://www.proto.in) is India's first serious event to showcase new products, technologies and companies to a selected gathering of venture capitalists, industry leaders and technologists. The event is born out of the desire to project India's image as not just an outsourcing backend to the world, but also a creator of innovative, cutting edge technology products and services.

Thirty European Nobel Laureates To Visit India

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:00 +0530

Thirty Nobel prize winners from Europe are visiting Delhi on February 7-8. They are guests of the Indian government. They will interact with students and academia in Delhi.

Source: Hindustan Times

Patentman Dr. R.A.Mashelkar

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:00 +0530

Business Standard (via Rediff.com) ran an interview with Dr. R.A.Mashelkar, the outgoing CSIR czar. They call him the "Patentman". It is to single-minded effort by Dr. Mashelkar that government bodies and bureaucrats are not totally anti-patent. Further, through CSIR he has shaken the staid scientific research community to not have an utopian anti-patent approach. His telling quote is: " "Indian IQ is being used to create IP (intellectual property) for foreign firms," laments Mashelkar. Take the numbers for Bangalore. Almost 92 per cent of the 474 US patents granted to the city last year were to foreign firms with Indian inventors. The number was almost 70 per cent for Mumbai and 57 per cent for Delhi."

Source: Rediff.com

AIIMS Invents Jacket for Underweight Infants

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:00 +0530

AIIMS (All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences), India's premier medical hospital and college, has invented a special jacket for new born children who are born underweight. Nicknamed Kangaroo Mother Care jacket, it provides for "more regular breathing and fewer predispositions to apnea". Further, "The jacket also protects against hospital acquired infections. Like the mother, any member of the family can also wear the jacket." The cost of the jacket is only Rs. 250. Source: Indian Express

ISRO Successfully Launches PSLV-C7 With Four Satellites

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:00 +0530

ISRO successfully launched the 44.5-metre-tall, 295-tonne PSLV-C7. The launch carried four payloads: Cartosat and capsule recovery equipment from India, an Indonesian satellite and a tiny satellite from Argentina. Source: Rediff.com

Glenmark Gets $32.5 mil. Upfront from Merck for a New Diabetes Drug Research

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:00 +0530

Glenmark entered an agreement with Merck for developing its "lead molecule for type II diabetes, GRC 8200, an oral DPP-IV (Dipeptidyl Peptidase IV) inhibitor that is currently in Phase II trials in South Africa and India." Merck paid upfront US $32.5 million and further payments are promised in a stepwise manner under the agreement. Apart from Glenmark's GRC 8200 other new drug in pipeline coming out of India are "Dr. Reddy�s anti-diabetic compound Balaglitazone and Ranbaxy�s anti-malarial compound RBx 11160 are in advanced stages of clinical testing and are expected to launch by 2010".

Source: Redherring.com Article

Google Offers Patent Search

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00 +0530

Google is offering free patent search. The URL is: http://www.google.com/patents. We found it to be quite fast.

HAL and Honeywell in Civil Aircraft Engine Manufacturing Talks

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:00 +0530

Honeywell Inc., and Hindustran Aeronautics Ltd., a government company in India, are in talks to manufacture civilian aircraft engines in India. HAL's main business is to make defense aircrafts, mostly under Russian licenses. Honeywell wants to transfer a production line for their small transportation aircraft engine to HAL. Aircraft engine manufacturing is a key technology that India has only just hovered around (no pun intended!). India's extreme problems in creating an engine for its Light Combat Aircraft (LCA/Tejas) are well-known. The GTRE (Gas and Turbine Research Establishment) struggle with its "Kaveri" engine for LCA/Tejas is well known. In light of this sorry scenario, more HAL gets into aircraft engine making is better for country's aerospace expertise.
Source:Hindu Newspaper

A file photo, not from Honeywell

Sibal Says Government Will Fund Innovation

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00 +0530

Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Kapil Sibal, said government will fund innovation. In the next budget, a public fund for innovation will be announced. The fund will award 30 per cent as patent or license fees, 30 per cent for funding the actual research project and rest 40 per cent to the institute where the work will be done. Indyvation feels this is just another "hot-air" government scheme. Invention is an inherently risky enterprise. Indyvation strongly believes that government must use public funds to further inventions. But we need a sector specific approach that funds our competencies, and not just general funds. For example, NCL (National Chemical Laboratory) does good work in catalyst research, so why not pump large quantities of fund in that research which is world-class?

New Innovation Fund in Next Budget

Poincare Conjecture, Ricci Flow, and Perelman

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00 +0530

Author: George Koomullil

The award of the Fields Medal for proving the century-old Poincare� conjecture and its decline by the winner, Grigory Perelman, have become interesting news in the media recently. This article is the result of an attempt to understand the mathematical background of the problem solved by Perelman.

The area of mathematics that deals with the problem is called topology. Topology deals with curves, surfaces, and spaces and studies their properties as they undergo deformations, twisting, and stretching. In topology, the surfaces of a cube, with smooth edges, and sphere are essentially the same since one can be morphed to the other through stretching or shrinking. Let us consider two surfaces, one of a sphere and the other of a torus (think of it as a donut as shown in figure 1). Both are two dimensional surfaces in a three dimensional space. We can draw closed curves on them (black curves shown in figure 1) that can be shrunk to a point without leaving the surface or breaking the curve. In the case of a sphere, all closed curves will shrink to some point on its surface. However, in the case of a torus, some of the curves (e.g., closed curves shown as loops around its eye or its body plotted in magenta and red in figure 1) can never be shrunk to a point without either leaving the surface or breaking the curve. This defines one property that is not common to the surfaces of sphere and torus. So, we distinguish them by calling the surface of sphere as simply connected and that of torus as not.

Microsoft IPR Scholarships for NALSAR, Hyderabad Students

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:00 +0530

Microsoft presented three scholarships of 80,000 rupees each to students of NALSAR University, Hyderabad, a law school. The names of the recipients are as follows: S Maheshwari, R Nandini and Santhosh Krishnan. The scholarships are intended to promote intellectual property. The scholarships were presented by K. Ramaswamy, a former judge of the Supreme Court. On Microsoft's behalf Nancy Anderson, Deputy General Counsel and Vice President was present.

Source: Economic Times

Hearing Impaired Students' Science Exhibition in Pune

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation takes special pride in talking about physically challenged persons involved in scientific and technical fields. About 600 hearing impaired students from 150 schools are holding a science exhbition in Pune. The exhibition is titled "Science without words" and will be held at the Ganesh Kala Krida Rang Manch. Apte Prashala's research and development center for hearing imparied is organizing the exhibition. The center has been in operation for 16 years. Several activities are planned around the exhbition including publications and CD-ROM releases.

Dates: December 1 to 3, Location: Ganesh Kala Krida Rang Manch, Pune

Organizers: Apte Prashala, Kalyani Mandke, A.L. Deshmukh

Source: Times of India, Pune Edition, 15 Nov 2006, Print Edition

Create a Dustbin From Fruit Juice Boxes

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00 +0530

We took an inordinately long break for the festival season. But Indy is back with a bang. We show you how to create a dustbin/utility-box out of discarded fruit juice boxes. Typically, fruit juices sold under brands such as "Real" or "Tropicana" are sold in "Tetrapaks" which is a multilayered packaging material combining paper and plastic. These and other packaging boxes for liquids are discarded after one use. The inner side of liquid packaging boxes are liquid proof. We reverse the inner side as outer side to provide some degree of water/liquid resistance to the dustbin. Structural strength can be improved by crimping or other techniques. Invention need not be big; small steps help create a big destination.

Indyvation Creates Dustbins from Juice Boxes

Many More Pictures in the Full Article Below

We just present the pictures and let you fill out the story :-) Do email us to tell us what you think about this. We will be happy to feature your invention or creations here, just make sure they are fun and interesting.

All trademarks are hereby acknowledged as belonging to their respective owners.

Jagdish Chandra Bose's US Patent 755,840

Mon, 2 Oct 2006 00:00 +0530

Jagdish Chandra Bose, one of India's most celebrated scientist, was also an inventor. He is credited with inventing the field of wireless transmission among other things. It is not known to many that he obtained a US patent (No. 755, 840 granted issued on 29 March 1904) titled "Detector for Electrical Disturbances". A snapshot of it is shown below:

Cartoon by Sujit K Chakrabarti

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation Presents Three Slideshows

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation presents three IP related slideshows. These slideshows are exclusive to Indyvation and not available anywhere else. One was presented earlier but is now updated. The slideshows are based on talks given at IIPS in July, 2006. Topics are: (1) US Patent Litigation (2) Patent Infringement and (3) Due diligence (including valuation basics) and Audit. Each slideshow comes with a PDF handout of slides that you can download for your personal non-commerical use. Please send your comments at comments@indyvation.com. All current and future slideshows are archived in the "Slideshows" section of Indyvation. Link to Slideshows

Slideshows on infrigement, US patent litigation and due-diligence

CSIR Patent Problems

Tue, 5 Sep 2006 00:00 +0530

Some heavy crticisim is being levelled at CSIR's (Link) patent strategy. A website (Telguportal (Link)) is reporting several dissents over the money spent by CSIR on patenting. Several charges are levelled as to frivolousness of patents, non-commericialization, irrelvance, etc. Full article below has more details.

POW: US-D527,459 - Tiltable Patient Positioning Table

Mon, 4 Sep 2006 00:00 +0530

We are using the US patent database to bring you POW (Patent of the Week) column. Due to unavailability of Indian patents online we are using the US patent database. Patents that have an inventor with inventor country listed as India are used. Today, we present a design patent. The patent is US - D527,459 issued to Pudipeddi Sapta Gireesh (Karnataka) and assigned to the General Electric Company. As you may know, a US design patent has only one formal claim that points to the ornamental design as the claimed invention. In India, designs are issued design registration rather than a "patent" as in US.

US-D527,459 "Tiltable Patient Positioning Table"

Ranbaxy Wins Two Astorvastatin Patent Challenges in Norway

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

Cholestrol control has become an important medical goal of our times. Ranbaxy's presented patent challenges to Astorvastatin (Brand: Lipitor of Pfizer) in Norway. "The Oslo City Court sided with the company by finding non-infringement of two of Pfizer's Norwegian patents (No. 177,566 and No. 180,199) covering particular intermediate compounds, Ranbaxy said in a statement in New Delhi." (Source: Hindustan Times Article(Link))

Indyvation Introduces Sujit K Chakrabarti's Cartoon Series...

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation is proud to introduce a new cartoon series in our humor section. The artist Sujit K Chakrabarti has just begun the series and lots of fun lies ahead. Sujit is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore and a keen artist. This series is exclusive to Indyvation.com, you will not find it anywhere else.

Artist: Sujit K Chakrabarti

Gilead to Sell bestselling AIDS Drug

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

DailyIndia.com (Link) is reporting that Gilead, which sells the bestselling AIDS treatment drug "Viread", has licensed three Indian pharma majors Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Hetero Drugs and Strides Arcolab to provide the drug for $1 per day. Gilead will charge a five percent royalty and will transfer technology and knowhow to the three licensed Indian companies. The three Indian companies will be able to export Viread to other 95 low-income countries.

Gilead Licenses Viread to Indian Companies

Indyvation believes that it will be humanity's loss if we cannot work out a workable structure for AIDS realted pharmaceutical inventions. This will include investment and equitable distribution of drugs. It is precisely here that we need government intervention to balance all sides of the equation.

NABARD-SWISS Agency Fund for Rural Innovation

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) (Link) in association with Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has constituted the "NABARD-SDC Rural Innovation Fund (RIF)" to, inter alia, support innovative projects in Farm, Non-Farm and Micro-Finance Sectors leading to creation of livelihood opportunities for the poor.

Indyvation finds NABARD's encouragement to rural innovation really promising. Some people ridicule that why are we inventing spray pumps when the world has become so hi-tech. Indyvation judges such critics as wrong. If you look at early American inventions, they too are rural. Inventions justify the need for them. In a predominantly agricultural country, rural innovation will bring multiplier effect. People will imbibe the fact that technology can improve life. And once that happens, there is no looking back to old luddite ways of life. Read the full article for more details.

Indyvation Unveils a Searchable Patent Practioner Database

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation now includes a searchable Indian patent practioner database. This database can be accessed from the main page of www.indyvation.com. The database includes contact information for Indian patent agents and attorneys and can be searched on name or city fields. The Indian Patent Office displays a list of patent practitioners that is updated until 1st July 2006(Link). However, this is a bland PDF file and not a searchable database. Indyvation's uses this list as a source and converts it into a searchable database.

DST-Intel India Innovation Pioneers Challenge 2006 Competition

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

Intel and Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, are holding a unique competition for business plans. The competition is titled, "DST-Intel India Innovation Pioneers Challenge 2006" (Link). The business plans can cover various categories such as manufacturing of electronics, instrumentation and control hardware, digital home, consumer electronics, retailing technologies, IT for agriculture and novel software/web services. The competitors are grouped into three categories of Champion of Champions (past winners; Last Date 30 Aug 06), Scholar Sparks (students; Last Date 22nd Sep 06) and Wildcards (others; Last Date 22nd Sep 06). Prizes are: First Prize Rs 3,00,000, Second Prize Rs 1,00,000, Third Prize Rs 50,000. Additionally, winners get an all expenses paid-trip to UC-Berkeley (economy travel, boarding and lodging only) for participating at the Intel-UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge. This is a great chance to show your business and technical skills. Indyvation encourages you to just do it!

Digital Camera Inventor Sasson from Kodak Visits India

Tue, 8 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

The inventor of the digital camera, Steven J Sasson, visited India recently. (Link). He works with Kodak (Link) where he invented the digital camera in year 1975. Kodak is most well-known for its film photography inventions. Kodak is a $14 billion (approx) company (2005 Revenue) that started with George Eastman's dry process invention that created the consumer camera market. Kodak also holds a valuable portfolio of digital photography patents. Kodak is also a top digital camera maker having a made a little bumpy but significant transition from a film photography company to a digital photography company.

We review Steven Sasson's few patents on digital cameras. Please read the full article by clicking link below.

An "EasyShare" Digital Camera From Kodak. (Public Domain Images from www.wikimedia.org)

Interview with Team Presto!

Sat, 5 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

Presto! is an application that allows you to interact with your home or office computer whenever and wherever needed remotely through email. Indyvation presents an illuminating interview with the student team that developed Presto!. Presto! is developed by a team of enthusiastic students: Anushree Venkatesh, Ashwin H.B, Ashwini Bhagwat and Kaushik R. All of them are students of PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore. Their mentor is Dr. Kavi Mahesh, Professor, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore; Founder and CEO, EasySoftech.com and knowledge Management Consultant at Infosys Technologies Ltd. Presto! lets you control attached peripheral devices and electrical appliances with ease, search for files, send emails, disconnect from the Internet, shut down the remote computer and more. For this, you can use any computer or wireless device with an internet connection like laptops, mobile phones, PDAs etc.

Team Indyvation is pleased to bring you this exclusive interview this dynamic student inventors. We at Indyvation applaud Presto! team's invention and their sincere response to Indyvation's interview request. Please read Full Article for detailed Article along with Team Members Introduction and Screen shots. Their is a lot of technical details in the full article; Please click the link below to read the full article

The Presto! Team

(From Left:Ashwini Bhagwat, Anushree Venkatesh, Dr. Kavi Mahesh (Mentor), Kaushik R, and Ashwin HB)

Ranbaxy Partly Looses the Lipitor Appeal Against Pfizer

Thu, 3 Aug 2006 00:00 +0530

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit , the US appellate court for patent causes, has upheld the validity of the main patent (US4,681,893) on Pfizer's blockbuster drug "Lipitor" (Link). This decision goes partly against the generic challenger from India, Ranbaxy Laboratories (Link). The main patent upheld by the court will remain valid till March 2010 effectively blocking Ranbaxy's generic lipitor alternative. However, the Court invalidated another patent on Lipitor (the US5,273,995 patent) which could have extended Lipitor's patent control until 2011. The decision in the case Pfizer v. Ranbaxy (Fed. Cir. 2006, 06-1179), is available here from the Court's website: (Link). A more detailed snapshot of the decision is available in the full version of this article (click the link below for Full Article). Several news agencies are carrying reports about this decision (e.g., Reuters: (Link))

Chemical Forumla for Atorvastatin Calcium; Source: Federal Circuit Opinion in the Case

Lipitor is a brand name (owned by Pfizer (Link)) for the drug astorvastatin calcium (chemical forumla is shown below) that is used to lower cholesterol. Lipitor accounts for about $12.2 billion in 2005 making it the Pfizer's main source of revenue.(Link).

India Rejects MIT Prof. Negroponte's One-Laptop-Per-Child Program

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Several news sources (e.g. Register - Link) are reporting that India has rejected MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte's "One Laptop Per Child" program Link. Indian education secretary Mr. Banerjee is said to have dismissed the laptop program as "pedagogically incorrect" and that the need is for more classrooms rather than such fancy toys.

Indyvation strongly urges Indian government to reconsider its decision. Why should India be a laggard in adopting something new? Nobody is going to experiment, succeed or fail and learn if new things are not tried out. Yes, experiments are expensive, but prudence demands that we experiment at least to some extent. Outright dismissal of a promising idea does not help innovators. A prototype of the laptop is shown below.

Image Source: http://www.laptop.org

Legislative History of the Indian Patent Laws

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation presents you a brief history of the Indian Patent Legislation Acts and Rules compiled by Krishna Kedia. The journey of Indian patent law begun in the year 1856 with the adoption of Protection of Inventions Act and has travelled a long with recent amendments and Rules.

Please see Full Article for detailed listing and downloading the original documents. This is a work in progress and Krishna hopes to add more original documents soon. The legislative table will be stored under the "Laws" section of Indyvation permanently.

Mooncraft Design Competition from Rediff.com

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Rediff.com deserves congratulations from Indyvation. They are holding a mooncraft design competition as a prelude to ISRO's moon mission. This is a welcome step to encourage imagingation and design skills among the budding spacecraft designers.

More details can be found at: Link

IIT Kharagpur Starts a IP Law School

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

IIT Kharagpur has started its first batch of its new IP law school. The law school is named as The Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law (RGSOIPL). They plan to run a 3 year LL.B. and a diploma course from its Kolkata campus. Indyvation welcomes this trend of technical schools becoming universities in a real sense of the word. However, we have no idea why this law school has such quixotic entrance requirements. You need to be an "First Class Bachelors Degree in Engineering/Technology/Medicine or equivalent OR First Class Masters Degree in Science or Pharmacy OR MBA with Science and Engineering background." This is just another example of the crazy Indian desire to go after degrees rather than learning. IIT seems to be trying to replicate its IIT "brand" for a law school, but law is not a number crunching course. Law needs a well rounded personality, not somebody who can do well on a quantitative IQ test.

IIT Kharagpur Law School Link

Biocon To License Insulin Drug in US

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Biocon (http://www.biocon.com/) is reporting that it is exploring licensing opportunities for its insulin product in the US. Biocon is described as India's "largest biotech" company. Apparently, Biocon's insulin will fetch higher margins in US. What stumps Indyvation is that Indian companies are all focused on US and European markets. Why not have a product that can be marketed in a population of 1 billion people? or do the economics of drug making don't allow such a business model?

(Source: DNAIndia.com)

C.N.R. Rao Laments the State of Indian Science

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

CNR Rao, a distinguished scientist, laments the state of Indian science. He was so disgusted with the state of affairs that he sent a letter to the Prime Minster and called it a warning that something must be done quickly to remedy the situation. He went on to compare India and China and had this to say:

" We are way below China, which contributes around 12% to world science (compared to our less than 3%). "

India's Inventors Are on a Roll...

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

PESIT Students Create an Email Based Remote Control System

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

ICAR Develops Bird Flu Vaccine

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Indyvation Slideshow - US Patent Litigation

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Avishkar (Invention) Show on NDTV

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

Indiagame.com Releases Emperor Ashoka Game

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

IPIS Offers IP Insurance

Fri, 7 Jul 2006 00:00 +0530

PCT Filings

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

PCT Filings

Developing Nations PCT Filing Share

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

$64 billion Drugs To Go Off-Patent in US-EU over 2007-08

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

Daily India is reporting about KPMG's views about Indian pharmaceutical business. Main points are summarized below:

1. Indian pharmaceutical industry is worth $6 billion out of a global industry of $650 billion. Indian drug industry is growing at 10% while global industry is growing at 6%.
2. $65 billion worth of medicines will go off-patent in US and EY over 2007-08.

Intrestingly, the article notes that unlike India, China offers data protection.

NASSCOM Concludes a Software Product Summit

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

Business Standard notes that NASSCOM recently concluded a "Product Summit" for the software industry. Intrestingly, the talk was about creating IP. And there was a demand for creating a government fund of Rs. 5-10 Crore corpus because each patent costs Rs. 5-10 lacs to file.

Indian Immunology Research is Shining...

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

Financial Express interviewed National Institute of Immunology (NII) director Avadhesha Surolia. NII has achieved significant progress. The interview mentions "It has so far developed, validated and transferred technology to the industry, two kits for pregnancy, one each for typhoid, hepatitis B, amoebic liver abscess and intestinal amoebiasis. ".

How To Write a Patent Application?

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

We are starting a new series of articles titled "How To Write A Patent". We have deliberately kept the scope as exploratory rather than a fixed set of lessons. Please send us your comments at hbs.law@gmail.com. We will not hesitate to change lesson plans based on your advice which is most welcome. The first lesson is below. Here we go!

Disclaimer: If you have an invention that you want to patent, we give you only one piece of advice - Contact a qualified and experienced patent attorney or agent in your country. A list of such people is available on national patent office websites - (India: http://www.patentoffice.nic.in/ ; US: http://www.uspto.gov). These trained professionals are licensed to provide patent protection. Writing a patent is no trivial job, hence leave it to experts. We accept no responsibility and make it clear that anything on this site is NOT legal advice and should not be taken so. This material is for general awareness and for licensed patent practioners to enhance their skills.

India to Push Darjeeling GI at WTO

Fri, 9 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

India is hoping to push through its IP agenda in an upcoming WTO meeting about the TRIPS agreement. The first on list is GI (Geographical Indicators). India would like to ensure GI protection for Darjeeling Tea, a prized tea from a small region in India�s north east. India is also pushing for ensuring credit and sharing of benefits from biodiversity based patented products.

Apurv Mishra Invents a Disability Assiting Device - Glabenator

Thu, 8 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

Sixteen year old Apurv Mishra (Orissa) has invented a device for assisting disabled people. He calls it �Glabenator�, which is uses two electrodes attached to muscles of upper eye-brow to indicate choices. Example given is a screen showing daily needs where a disabled person can scroll through the options by raising eyebrows and selecting it by twitching the eyebrows. He wants to get a U.S. patent for his invention which has received a prize in a science fair in US.

Indyvation congratulated Apurv and suggests that he should file for patents, in India and US, at the earliest after getting advice from a qualified patent attorney.

Indian Automotive Inventor Anadish Pal's Patents

Wed, 7 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

Anadish Pal is an Indian independent inventor.

He writes on his site (http://www.freewebs.com/anadish/ ) that �I have two U.S. Patents (Nos.6,717,300 and 7,017,696) on the use of induction motor as a sensor and a Personal Mobility Vehicle (PMV).� He mentions that he six other patents pending.

Indyvation finds it heartening that independent inventors are coming of an age in India. It is the enthusiasm of an individual that is the source of all inventions.

U.S. Patent 6,717,300 to Anandis Pal for his invention titled �Arrangement for using induction motor as a sensor to sense its own rotation when electrical power is not being supplied to it�

U.S. Patent 7,017,696 to Anandis Pal for his invention titled �Electric motor vehicle with passenger opening through ring motor�

Indyvation hopes to interview Anadish very soon. Stay tuned!

Link:
http://www.evworld.com/blogs/index.cfm?page=blogentry&authorid=100&blogid=293&archive=0

Pancea Biotech and NRDC Sign an In-Licensing Agreement

Tue, 6 Jun 2006 00:00 +0530

Pancea Biotech has signed an in-licensing agreement with NRDC (National Research Develoment Corporation) for technology to produce and market the foot and mouth disease (FMD) vaccine developed by Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI).

Indyvation finds it really encouraging that vast public funds spent on government health laboratories finally are seeing return on investment of some kind.

Link:
Link: http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=11&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=1572