India has made progress in protecting IPRs: US expert

Kolkata, May 3 (IANS) India has made a "lot of progress" in producing specialists in intellectual property and in developing new protections and laws dealing with related issues, a US expert said here on Thursday.

"... India, I think, had a more recent interest in IPRs (intellectual property rights) than the United States. In a short time, India has made a lot of progress in producing specialists in IP, in developing new protections and new laws dealing with issues in IP.

"... there is a long history of IP in India. But due to more technological advances, especially Internet, IP has become a much different and more fast-paced issue," said Christine Haight Farley, an expert on IPR and copyright law, at the American Center. 

She said Internet poses a lot of challenges for intellectual property protections.

She has been meeting lawyers who focus on intellectual property law and also with engineers, investors, and groups of entrepreneurs, start-up companies in technology, science and engineering and people from the film industry in Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata and will hold similar meetings in Delhi.

Based on her conversations, she said, there are lots of similarities between intellectual property laws of India and the United States though there are some differences also.

The US expert also said that laws related to IPRs across countries differ but general standards are the same and efforts are on to harmonise laws of different countries.

Farley is on the teaching faculty at the American University's Washington College of Law.