Evaluation of Awareness about Intellectual Property Rights

Abstract

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are significant because India is a signatory to TRIPS agreement and member of WTO.  Intellectual property rights are the monopoly rights enjoyed by the original creator. It includes exclusive rights allocated to the creator for reaping the profits of his creation by his intellectual wit and innovation. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are the rules which are formed to protect the inventions from being copied by others. This is done in order to protect the economic value of the new creation which is done by the innovator.  Granting Patents rights, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets are some of the main forms of IPRs. The awareness about IPRs is essential for the youth so as to develop their entrepreneurial skills which will help them to be the leaders in every field. A field survey on awareness about IPR has conducted for a specified purpose with a definite objective with specific community or target group. It uses questionnaires or interviews so as to assess knowledge of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and its types such as patents, copyrights, trademarks. The purpose of this study is to examine the awareness of intellectual property rights (IPR) among youth i.e. college students. The significance of this study can be understood in two ways. - (i) to sensitize the youth regarding IPRs (ii) to make them understand the role of infringements of IPR. Questionnaire containing 20 questions was designed on various aspects of IPR awareness covering definitions of IPR and its different types -patents, copyrights, trademarks, process of registration of IPR like patents, IPR infringement and its consequences, IPR laws, IPR- mechanism, personal experiences on IPR. The survey gave optimist results about the awareness assessment of the youth about Intellectual Property Rights awareness. Although many of the respondents did not have 100% clarity a bout IPR yet they tried to respond well. However, more conceptual clarity and practical guidance is required to sensitize them about IPR and provide them actual knowledge ab out IPR.