Intellectual Property Right (IPR) is a legal term that covers innovations, novel ideas, thoughts, and information having commercial values and gives the innovator a right to protect it from being used by others. It includes a wide range of intangible properties ranging from information to inventions. It generally includes patents, copyrights, and trademarks providing legal rights to protect ideas, the expression of ideas, and names, logos, and marks used to identify a business of a specific product. It bears similarity with a physical property in the sense that it can be bought and sold or rented. The owner has the exclusive right if the IPR is granted and thus protected from infringement. Intellectual property law serves a variety of societal goals, including fostering innovation and promoting economic and cultural development. The IPR promotes innovations in diverse fields and protects the innovations having commercial values by giving the exclusive right to the innovator to prevent others from using it without permission. These legal rights may vary from country to country but in general, this creates competitiveness and also leads to innovations in different sectors with potential for commercialization. The IPR has relevance to each and every field of development like health, agriculture, education, trade, biodiversity management, biotechnology, information technology, the entertainment and media industries etc.

To encourage research and innovation among the faculty members of D.D.U. Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, an IPR cell was proposed to the Council of Science and Technology, U.P., Lucknow and Prof. Dinesh Yadav, Department of Biotechnology was made Nodal officer on 10th Jan 2019 by Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor. Initial financial support for the establishment of IPR cells was provided by the Council of Science and Technology, U.P., Lucknow on 30th March 2019. The IPR cell of the University is presently located in the Department of Biotechnology, D.D.U. Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur. An IPR committee comprising external members and internal members representing different departments of the faculty of Sciences and Law has been constituted by approval of the Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor. As per the guidelines for the establishment of IPR cell in State University with CST, U.P. and DST, Govt. of India specific objectives and activities of the IPR cell have been proposed.

Objectives of the IPR Cell

• To work as a link and bridge between Patent Information Centre, CST, UP and University and its affiliated Colleges
• To advise and guide researchers on the basics of IPR, especially patents with the help of PIC if necessary
• Encourage faculty members to carry out patent searches in-house and/or at PIC and fine-tune their research.
• To facilitate clearance from the competent authority for filing a patent and forward it for IP protection to PIC, UP.

Activities of the IPR Cell

• To organize group meetings/lectures in different Department and affiliated colleges for IPR awareness and understanding with support of PIC officials.
• To take IPR audit of research programme
• To facilitate IP management.
• To access the proposals for patent and scrutinize them through patent search with the help of PIC, CST, UP.
• First meeting of members of IPR committee of IPR cell, D.D.U. Gorakhpur University was held on 20/09/2019 in Department of Biotechnology in which all internal members representing different Department of Science under faculty of Science and Law faculty attended.
• Second meeting was held on 01/10/2019 in which a member from Council of Science and Technology, U.P., Lucknow Mr. Mohit Srivastava attended and discuss different issues associated with the establishment of IPR cell in the University.
• An awareness programme on IPR issues for faculty members, Research Scholars and and students is proposed in January 2020 for which financial grant of Rs. 80,000/- has been sanctioned from Council of Science and Technology, U.P., Lucknow.

Members of IPR Cell