INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR) AWARENESS AMONG MILLENNIALS IN CHENNAI

Abstract

Intellectual property laws encompass protection of copyright, trademark and other IP rights. The importance of protecting one’s IP rights starts from being aware of the mechanisms which are used in the IPR legal framework. Academicians of every discipline to a creator possess rights over their intellectual labour, and each minute one creates something out of their mind. IPR experts in India along with the government of India conducted recent surveys in metropolitan cities, only to find out that only 25% of the employees of various sectors knew the basics of IPR and its applications. Focusing on the attempts made in the international level, international bodies such as WIPO and WTO are pro-actively conducting workshops and outreach programmes to spread awareness to all cadres of people in all the member states. The United States Trade Representatives (USTR), the official wing for trade matters, has kept ‘India’ and 25 other countries on ‘priority watch list’ for IPR violations. This is a setback for a country like India which contributes maximum human capital, raw-material resources and investments for the global economy. The lack of awareness leads to IPR violations such as piracy, passing off and copyright infringement. Outdated enforcement policies and inefficient compliance framework for maintenance of trade-secrets especially in the pharmaceutical sector and other corporate sectors, also presents a problem. Innovative and fresh techniques are the current need which will stem out of educating and acquiring novel ideas from the millennial, the students and graduates, exclusively associated in the sphere of IPR. This paper focuses on awareness of IPR and is studied through empirical method with a view to highlight the percentage of millennial who have crucial knowledge of the basics of IPR and its types.