When Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet – ‘What’s in the name? That which we call a Rose/By any other name would smell as sweet’ – brand names and trademarks probably did not hold much importance. And the concept of paying licence fee for the use of intellectual property did not exist; at least not in the way the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) envisages it.
As for India, using Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of foreign entities is a costly affair, the one that has been escalating by leaps and bounds. In the last four decades, India’s payment for the use of intellectual property rose by 56,862% from $15.1 million in 1981 to $8,631.3 million ($8.6 billion) in 2021.
Analysis of the Balance of Payments (BOP) data released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that, in 2021, Indians have spent about 10 times more on payment for using foreign owned Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) than what the entire world has paid for the use of Indian IPR.
In the year 2021, India paid $8,631.3 million for use of Intellectual Property Rights owned by foreign entities. On the other hand, the income derived from IPR owned by Indian entities was merely $870.1 million. However, the consolation is, four decades back India paid 80 times more for the use of foreign IPR as compared to what it earned from its own IPR.
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