Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, (IISc) and Prorigo Software Pvt. Ltd. have jointly developed a software that helps automate the legal and bureaucratic part of the patent process for intellectual property developed by Indian academicians in large and small institutes.
The software is not only better suited for the use of academicians, but also comes at a fraction of the cost of software developed outside India — which was the only choice available until now.
“Such a solution that is customised or can be customised to Indian academic needs, at a price point that is affordable does not exist,” said Srinivasan Raghavan, chair, Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, IISc. Work on the software, named ProrIISe, was initiated when he was heading the Intellectual Property and Technological Licensing section (IPTeL) of the institute, in 2016. Since then, the software has been tested for more than three years at the IISc itself, to the satisfaction of its faculty.
Govindan Rangarajan, director, IISc, said the feedback from faculty had been ‘highly positive,’ and ‘they appreciated having everything logged in one place.’ Kaustubh Karandikar, a director at Prorigo Software, said the solution would cost about a few lakh rupees.
Version 2.0 of the software, which is slated for release in 2021, would automate the financial part also. The next version, which is expected to be release in 2022 will bring in artificial intelligence approaches to processes required to evaluate a patent.
Mr Karandikar further said that there are two options available: one, for the use of small firms and institutions, where the application is deployed and managed in Prorigo’s cloud environment. The subscription fee for this would cover both the cloud infrastructure cost and software license or management cost. The other, enterprise solution, for larger enterprises, is when the application is deployed in the customer’s own cloud environment which is managed by Prorigo. The subscription paid to Prorigo is for the application software license and management cost only.
