Policies of Academic Research Institutions on Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis

The academic research institutions (ARI) are storehouse of knowledge. The surge in the research and development activities undertaken by the ARI has added to the pool of the technology and innovation to provide solutions to the emerging problems affecting the world. The eminent and young minds of the ARI actively pursue the research work as a part of their thesis. The outputs generated from this research is protected as Intellectual Property of that ARI. ARIs need to safeguard their Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) from any kind of undue exploration from any other organization including industries and other private partners. In order to ensure this, a policy document is framed by all the ARIs which acts as an interface both at internal and external level for IPR management of that particular ARIs. This IPR policy is binding upon all the staff and students since the time of inception of their association with the ARIs in every form. This study attempts to give a view of the essential points covered in the IPR policies of the well-known National and International ARIs and the practices employed by them for efficacious management of the IP. An attempt is also made establish the similarities and distinctions in their IPR policies.