Centre for Internet and Society

BIC

praskrishna — 2018-06-23T04:32:18Z

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BIC

praskrishna — 2018-06-23T04:32:34Z

BIC

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Biblio Review File

praskrishna — 2014-02-14T06:56:48Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/biblio-january-february-2014.pdf

Bhuvana Meenakshi

praskrishna — 2019-09-22T23:35:29Z

Bhuvana Meenakshi

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Bhuvana.jpg

Bhutan's Google Apps

praskrishna — 2014-01-30T12:17:53Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bhutan-google.pdf

BHASHA - Indian Languages Digital Festival

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:14:37Z

Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk at the Bhasha- India Languages Digital Festival a conference organized by news media YourStory, at New Delhi on March 11, 2016. In the panel "The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles" Panigrahi spoke about some of the challenges in growing the Indian-language Wikipedia projects and the communities.

The notes for the talk are below:

Wikipedia, that exists in many Indian languages are not known to masses. I personally did not know about the Odia Wikipedia until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, more contributors joined and the project grew up to what it is today. The site now has over 300,000 visitors every month and it is the largest visited site in Odia language on the Internet. This could probably be the same case for your language.

It has been quite challenging in the past to grow the Indian-language Wikipedia projects. There are many challenges and I would talk about eight of them:

1. Language communities

The language communities of many of the Indian languages are such that many of them even do no know how to search any information online in their language typed in their script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script means that their language does not exist on the Internet. There exist a large gap of ignorance.

2. Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia, as you all know, is written by people like you and me. And from writing to editing everything happens voluntarily. As many people do not probably know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracy that exist in many Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.

3. Language input

There is a vast majority of people in this country that do not know how to type in their own language.

4. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

There are two stages to the lack of Open Access to information. First, lack of native language content on the Internet bars many to access knowledge. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, my state, the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in Odia-language. Our languages are neglected largely in our own states.

5. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional have still been using non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages about 25 years now.^[1] But many of our traditional media has failed to adopt this. Malayala Manorama, one of the most circulated dailies in Malayalam languages and one of the oldest Indian newspaper still has not started using Unicode on their website. Same is the case for many other newspapers in India.

6. Lack of Open Access

The information produced on the Internet in general and by the government, in particular, are mostly copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stop people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of its content. The idea of opening up information for masses in a free license could make the information reach to millions of people.

7. Mobile input

With over 1 billion people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow meaning lot many Indians will have access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be victims of the English-centric Internet rather than being able to enjoy the virtue of the same. Many Indians that have smartphones need pre-built input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

8. People with disabilities

Many cannot read, speak and write. India has over 60 million people with hearing impairment.^[2] There is a need for good quality text to and speech to text engine for these languages. Also, these software products have to be free software so common people, that cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS, can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is way hard for common speakers to use them.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival

Bharat

praskrishna — 2022-10-11T13:10:19Z

Bharat

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Bharat

praskrishna — 2012-01-19T12:33:58Z

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Bhairavi Jani

praskrishna — 2012-04-11T10:08:41Z

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Beyond the Searchlight

praskrishna — 2013-10-23T11:15:27Z

Should we be wary of Google’s all-pervasiveness?

This article Debarshi Dasgupta was published in the Outlook on October 23, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Search Google

Some queries to type in the window

Is what is good for Google good for India, especially after Brazil and the EU question its actions?
Are politicians sending out the right signals by associating with Google’s initiatives?
Is Google directing the internet intellectual discourse in a way that will benefit it?
Does Google initiate the kind of offline activities it does here in other democracies?
Is Google shutting out potential competition by obtaining a stranglehold on the internet?

Google’s policy, its CEO Eric Schmidt had once said, was to get right up to the creepy line, but not cross it. It has generated contentious debate about the firm’s activities and products, whether it’s accessing your e-mails to feed you targeted ads, something we have now come to accept grudgingly, or its soon-to-be-released Google Glass that comes fitted with miniature cameras and has advocates all worried about the next big breach on the privacy frontier.

Not just online, where privacy violations and anti-competitive practices have raised concerns globally, some of Google’s offline activities in India too should have us asking questions based on conflict of interest and lack of transparency. Here too, the company seems to have placed itself right next to the creepy line. Especially the way it has gone about sponsoring research at key think-tanks and academia on areas that directly concern its business interests.

Nothing illustrates this better than the work of PRS Legislative Research, which Google has funded in the past. PRS produces policy briefings that are sent out to lawmakers and the media, including on internet governance. PRS hasn’t got a clearance to receive foreign funds since it became independent of the Centre for Policy Research in 2010, where it was launched, and has since then been largely funded by domestic sources.

Prashant Reddy, Blogger

“That an Indian user seeking arbitration
with Google has to do so in a California
court reeks of double standards.”

Does this growing network mean Google is having a say in shaping internet governance laws? Maybe yes. They should have a say by all means, just as other interested parties must get theirs. But given its influence and the certain opaqueness that marks its activities, some more transparency can only boost the credentials of a firm whose informal motto is—“Don’t be evil”. Google may have helped you find that bit of information from the googol tera bytes of online data but it has so far largely evaded discussion on how it has gone on to become big and influential in India.

But while it may have been forced to back out from funding PRS directly, Google’s web of research fellows in this country is growing. In August this year, the Asia Internet Coalition, of which Google is a founding member, selected its two inaugural India fellows—Shehla Rashid Shora and Astik Sinha, both of whom will analyse policies concerning the internet environment here. Sinha also happens to be a social media advisor for BJP MP Anurag Thakur.

So big that it hobnobs with Narendra Modi in the first of its Hangout series and, quite contrary to its espousal of free speech, has comfortable questions pitched to him. Or so influential that it has telecom minister Kapil Sibal, its bete noire from 2011 when his ministry was forcing them to pull down content, to attend the launch of chandnichowkonline.in, a business directory of Sibal’s constituency. Outlook made several attempts to get a reaction from Google but received none by the time this article had to go to the press.


Blurred lines Paid ads seem no different from search results for cameras

Google, since 2011, has also placed three fellows so far under its annual Google Public Policy Fellowship programme at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). The research is supposed to focus on “access to knowledge, openness in India, freedom of expression, privacy, and telecom”. Yet another crucial funding in May 2013 went to the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University in New Delhi, which does research on areas directly linked to its business interests. The agreement contains a clause that says “Google will not be excluded from any future business opportunities”. Its research director Chinmayi Arun did not respond to Outlook’s e-mail and said she was too busy to speak when Outlook called her up.

A third institution Google has funded is the media watch website The Hoot. After the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai when the government hastily amended the IT Act, clamping down in a restrictive spirit, noted journalist and the website’s editor Sevanti Ninan was one of the many criticising the government publicly in her articles. Google, she says, contacted her somewhere around mid-2009 seeking a proposal on how they could help with what she was working on. Ninan sent one proposing a Free Speech Hub and received a grant of $22,000 in January 2010 (approximately Rs 10 lakh at 2010 exchange rates) from Google to do so. The hub is an online forum to track free speech violation and highlight problems surrounding freedom of speech and expression and regulation of media.

The commitment was renewed in February 2012 with another grant of Rs 42 lakh. Ninan says that while Google was “not interested in media ethics but free speech”, its approach was entirely “hands-off” to what the site could include on the hub. “I think it’s entirely up to the organisation being funded to decide how it handles a grant. At the same time, anything Google does should be under scrutiny just like other corporations.”

“More transparency
and accountability
can only be good,
both for Google and for the organisation
it funds.”
Anja Kovacs, Internet Democracy Project

So just as it is necessary to publicise that Shell has ties with the India chapter of Brookings Institution or that Reliance sponsors the Observer Research Foundation, it is important that people know where Google is putting its money and for what gains. In fact, more so in the case of Google, a firm that touches our lives in so many more ways that Shell or Reliance does. Yet, a lot of what Google has been doing has gone without adequate publicity and scrutiny. Should we be any less sceptical of Google funding research that helps formulate policies on internet governance than we should be of, let’s say, the Tatas and Jindals on mining? “Google has huge money and its funding of research can be a very contentious issue, especially if it seeks to influence research. Therefore, parties who swear by full disclosure and transparency must adhere to it,” says senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. “More transparency and accountability can only be good, both for Google and the organisations it funds,” adds Anja Kovacs, who works with the Internet Democracy Project.


The great connector Hangout with Narendra Modi

But there has been little of that transparency online. For instance, the Rules and Regulations Review of The Information Technology Rules, 2011, put out and sent to MPs by PRS Legislative Research has no mention that an interested party (Google) has funded its work. Similarly, The Hoot has no mention of Google funding it on the ‘About the Hub’ page even though it has details of Google’s funding on the ‘Support The Hoot’ page. Google has also funded numerous ngos, in areas such as health and education, and has sought to promote the use of technology (often theirs, such as in the ongoing Google Impact Challenge Award).

“Because there is
no privacy
commissioner,
Indian citizens are
left vulnerable to
Google when it comes to
privacy.”
Sunil Abraham, CIS, Bangalore

This offline influence apart, Google’s hold online is worrying enough to call for action. The way it manipulates search results to favour clients of its AdSense programme is a global concern. For instance, a search for a popular phone model throws up matches of Google’s clients and features them more prominently than the actual site of the product. The Jaipur-based Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) conducted a survey that found most internet users could not tell an ad from an organic search result from Google. Says Madhav Dar, an independent anti-trust economist, “Given its financial clout and dominance of e-commerce, Google can directly deny traffic to downstream sites. And because the internet ecosystem is still in a formative stage here, this is something that requires intense and urgent scrutiny by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).”

CUTS filed a formal complaint with the CCI in June last year alleging anti-competitive practices and abuse of its dominant position. BharatMatrimony.com too filed a complaint with the CCI in 2012 accusing it of directing online users’ search for “Bharat+Matrimony” to its rivals.

For many, Google crossed the creepy line when it declared, in a court filing in August this year, that people sending e-mails to any of Google’s 425 million Gmail users need have no “reasonable expectation” that their communications are confidential. This is something that concerns Sunil Abraham, the executive director of CIS, which hosts Google fellows but has received no funding from the firm. “India has no omnibus horizontal statutes, neither sufficiently evolved vertical statutes in specific areas of telecommunication or the internet,” he says. “And because of that there is no office of the privacy commissioner in India and the absence of this regulator doesn’t tame the voracious appetite that Google has for personal information. This happens in other jurisdictions, but the Indian citizen is left vulnerable to Google when it comes to privacy.” “Part of Google’s practice can be absolutely abhorrent, such as the way in which it seeks to have a monopoly in digitising information and being the only one to organise it,” adds Kovacs.


Amitabh Bachchan Google maps his home at WEF in Davos

Another controversial move online has been the decision between Airtel and Google to allow the former’s subscribers free usage of Google’s service up to 1 GB. This has thrown up concerns of violation of “network neutrality”, a widely acknowledged concept that requires internet service providers to not discriminate against third party applications and service.

Journalist and blogger Shivam Vij, however, thinks concerns surrounding Google’s offline activities are misplaced. “As long as they keep coming out with transparency reports that show the majority of requests for user data and content removal are refused, I’d consider them an ally. One should be grateful that Google is funding to protect free speech and ashamed that Indian firms aren’t,” he says. “And if they really have been trying to influence MPs, they would have bribed them, not put out research.”

Nikhil Pahwa, who runs Medianama, a digital media news and analysis website, is another person who says “he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth”. “I don’t know what the motives are, but I support what they are doing, especially given the way the state and Indian firms are failing us when it comes to protecting free speech online,” he adds. The only concern he has about Google is regarding its reported unwillingness to agree to a deal between the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The deal seeks to ensure smaller online publishers and advertising networks are paid on time by advertisers, who, in most cases, delay payments to smaller entities but always pay bigger players like Google on time. “Smaller players are suffering due to delay in payments, which can extend up to a year, a problem that Google does not face. The IAMAI initiative is something that Google is unwilling to support because it does not impact them,” he adds.

"Anything that
Google does should
be under scrutiny
just like other corporations."
Sevanti Ninan, Editor, The Hoot


The outreach Sibal attends the launch of chandnichowkonline, a business directory of his constituency; Qutub Minar, digitised

Criticising or questioning some of Google’s policies does not amount to siding with the government on cracking down on free speech on the internet. Outlook ran a cover in December 2011 where it was severely critical of the government’s attempt to muzzle online dissent. Neither does concern about Google’s activities stem from a fear of the foreign hand. Its expansion into Indian civil society has to be seen as an attempt by a profits-driven corporation to ensure its market interests in India are protected. The country becomes all the more important given the trouble it has been having in Brazil and in Europe, where the firm has been slapped with a slew of anti-trust charges. Keeping a close watch will only help enforce Google’s policy in India—not crossing the creepy line.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/outlookindia-october-28-2013-debarshi-dasgupta-beyond-the-searchlight

Beyond Property Rights: Thinking About Moral Definitions of Openness

praskrishna — 2013-08-07T09:43:35Z

It is hard for Westerners to realize just how much we take for granted about intellectual property, and in particular, how much the property owner’s perspective--be it a corporation, government or creative artist--is embedded in our view of the world as the natural order of things.

This blog post by David Eaves was published in TECH President on August 6, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

While sharing and copying technologies are disrupting some of the ways we understanding “content,” when you visit a non-Western country like India, the spectrum of choices become broader. There is less timidity wrestling with questions like: should poor farmers pay inflated prices for patented genetically-engineered seeds? How long should patents be given for life-saving medicines that cost more than many make in a year? Should Indian universities spend millions on academic journals and articles? In the United States or other rich countries we may weigh both sides of these questions--the rights of the owner vs. the moral rights of the user--but there’s no question people elsewhere, such as in India, weigh them different given the questions of life and death or of poverty and development.

Consequently, conversations about open knowledge outside the supposedly settled lands of the “rich” often stretch beyond permission-based “fair use” and “creative commons” approaches. There is a desire to explore potential moral rights to use “content” in addition to just property rights that may be granted under statutes.

A couple of months ago I sat down in Bangalore with Sunil Abraham, the founder and executive director of the Center for Internet & Society (CIS) there, to talk about the center, and his views on the role of technology and openness in politics and society. One part of our conversation led to this WeGov column on “I Paid a Bribe” and the challenge of fighting corruption in India using technology. Here I want to reflect further on how Sunil and his counterparts may be radically challenging how we should think about open information more generally.

As we talked, Sunil outlined how people and organizations were using “open” methodologies to advance social movements or create counter power. To explain his view he sketched out the following “map” of IP rights and freedoms to show people use and view the different “permissions” (some legal, some illegal).

As a high-level overview this map offers a general list of the tools at the disposal of citizens interested in playing with intellectual property, particularly as they pursue social justice issues.

At the top of the chart are the various forms of “permissions” that a property owner may (or may not) grant you. Thus at the far left sits the most restrictive IP regime and, as you move right, the user gets more and more freedoms (or, if you take the perspective of property owners, property loses more and more of its formal legal protections and a different notion, of “moral rights,” arises).

The second row divides the permissions and the actors along what Sunil believes is one of the most important permissions - the requirement to attribute (or the freedom not to).

Finally, at the bottom, I’ve placed various actors along the spectrum to both show where they might be positioned in the access debate and/or how they use these tools to advance their aims. Thus someone like Lawrence Lessig, the intellectual father of Creative Commons, might support many uses of information as long as the owner gives permission; whereas groups like the Pirate Party or the Yes Men edge further out into uses that may not appear legitimate to a property owner.

Particularly interesting is Sunil’s decision to include non-legal “permissions” such as ignoring the property holders rights in his spectrum of openness. He sees this as the position of the Pirate Party, which he suggests advocates that people should have the right to do what they want with intellectual property even if they don’t have permission, with the exception, interestingly, of ignoring attribution.

He also includes two even more radical “permissions” – counterfeiting, that is claiming that you created the work – and false attribution – assigning your work to someone else! Sunil sees Anonymous as often using the former and the Yes Men as using the latter. “They (the Yes Men) are playing with the attribution layer,” he says, by conducting actions such as their fake DOW press release about the Bhopal disaster.

Pushing the identity envelope
To Sunil, the big dividing line is less about legal vs. illegal but around this issue of attribution. “This is the most exciting area because this (the non-attribution area) is where you escape surveillance,” he declares.

“All the modern day regulation over IP is trying to pin an individual against their actions and then trying to attach responsibility so as to prosecute them,” Sunil says. “All that is circumvented when you play with the attribution layer.”

This matters a great deal for individuals and organizations trying to create counter power – particularly against the state or large corporate interests. In this regard Sunil is actually linking the tools (or permissions) along the open spectrum to civil disobedience. Of course, such “permissions” are also used by states all the time, such as pretending that a covert action was the responsibility of someone else, or simply denying responsibility for some action.

This, in turn, has some interesting implications.

The first is, that it allows Sunil to weave together a number of groups that might not normally be seen as connected because he can map their strategies or tools against a common axis. Thus Lawrence Lessig, the Yes Man, companies and journalists can all be organized based on what “permissions” they believe are legitimate. For example, journalists and new publishers are often seen as fairly pro-copyright (it protects their work) but they are quite happy to ignore the proprietary rights of a government or corporate document and publish its contents, if they believe that action is in the public interest. Hence their position on the spectrum as “willing to ignore proprietary rights.” (Leave aside government arguments that publishing such documents is “stealing” when, at least in the US, they are technically already not subject to copyright.) However, a credible newspaper or journalist would never knowingly attribute a quote or document to a different person. Attribution remains sacred, even when legal proprietary rights are not.

It also tests the notions of who is actually an IP radical. As Sunil notes: “The more you move to the right the more radical you are. Because everywhere on the left you actually have to educate people about the law, which is currently unfair to the user, before you even introduce them to the alternatives. You aren’t even challenging the injustice in the law! On the right you are operating at a level that is liberated from identity and accountability. You are hacking identity.”

Sunil is thus justifying how the use of “illegal” permissions may actually be a form of civil disobedience that can be recognized as legitimate. This is something journalists confront regularly as well. Many are willing to publish “illegally” obtained leaked documents when they believe that may serve the public good. What is ethical is not always legal and so there position on this chart is more nuanced than one might initially suspect.

This is not to say that Sunil doesn’t believe in the effectiveness of legal approaches. For him this map represents a more complete range of choices an activist can choose from as they try to develop their strategy.

“So what you do, and the specific change you are trying to precipitate, you’ll have to determine what strategy you need. Sometimes working within the left hand group is sufficient. Having a non-derivative, non-commercial license to enable students to access academic works, in India, is good enough… But then, to do what the Yes Men did to DOW Chemicals? You have to be over on the right side.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tech-president-august-6-2013-david-eaves-beyond-property-rights-thinking-about-moral-definitions-openness

Beyond Clicktivism

praskrishna — 2011-04-20T04:33:53Z

Moral support Hazare has in plenty. Count the missed calls, writes Debarshi Dasgupta in this article published in the Outlook on April 18, 2011.

Want to commit sedition against the government?” “Join Dandi March-II.” “A Mahatma announces a fast-unto-death.” These were some of the clarion calls that organisers of the protest against corruption led by Anna Hazare were making online. And people from all classes responded in massive numbers. Possibly fed up with the scale of the CWG and 2G scams and exasperated by the petty and mundane corruption they encounter daily.

Anna Hazare and Jantar Mantar were among the top 10 global trending topics on Twitter on April 7 afternoon. “Earthquake named Anna Hazare lashes on corrupted Indian Politicians, epicenter India, it measures 1.22 Billion Richter Hearts,” said one. A disengaged youngster tweeted: “OK, enough of ignorance...time to read up on Anna Hazare.” On the ‘India Against Corruption’ page on Facebook, people from across the country left posts either announcing their local programme to support Hazare or asking for advice to organise one. Leaflets urged people to give a missed call on a Mumbai landline expressing support. With 6,00,000 missed calls, the organisers were urging more to call in to take that number to over 25 lakh.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, said the organisers of this social media campaign had adopted a “funnel approach”, in which they get people involved gradually. “Clicking on the ‘Like’ function on Facebook to making a call—they are increasing the action, incrementally getting people to become proper activists from being armchair slacktivists.”

Read the original here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/beyond-clicktivism

Better Understanding of the Idea of Privacy Sought

praskrishna — 2011-08-08T07:40:18Z

Understanding the ways in which an individual's privacy is violated will help provide a better definition of privacy in India. At a public conference called ‘Privacy Matters' held at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) here on Saturday, speakers underscored the need for discussions surrounding the privacy bill.

Prashant Iyengar from Privacy India said, "In India, we do not have a set view on privacy. There is a lot of articulation around privacy in law, yet we do not have an omnibus concept." He stressed the importance of bringing about discussions around the adequacy of safeguards.

Post 26/11 terror attacks, the country has seen an enhancement of electronic surveillance and the proliferation of databases that collect information from individuals, said Santhosh Babu, Secretary, Information Technology Department.

"The problem arises when these databases are misused for political or other reasons. In a legal framework, we have to figure out what information can be given out, what cannot and what can be misused," he said. He stressed the importance of databases going through a software development lifecycle to make them more secure.

Speaking from a media practitioner's perspective, Sashi Kumar, Chairman, Media Development Foundation, said it is the business of the media to conduct sting operations especially when people in power are obfuscating information. “Sting operations are legitimate when larger public good is at stake. We have to be aware of this when we discuss the privacy bill. It should not protect people in power and keep exposure at bay,” he said. He also stressed that privacy is closely linked with the dignity of the person. R. Ramamurthy, Chairman, Cyber Society of India said, “The definition of privacy varies from what it was twenty years ago to what it is today. A lot has changed since the internet came to India.” The statutes that govern all forms of communication in India should be revamped, he said. Discussions around privacy in relation to telecommunications, financial transactions, consumer rights and basic rights followed. The conference was a collaborative effort between Privacy India, Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group, Chennai and MIDS.

A staff reporter from the Hindu covered the event. The original can be read here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/better-understanding-of-privacy

Better intellectual property values luring Indian startups abroad

praskrishna — 2015-04-16T01:49:02Z

Prime Minister Narendra Modi says Make in India. But anyone who wants to, finds that their intellectual property is valued much more if the patent is filed in the US, or anywhere else, but India.

The article by Evelyn Fok and Varun Aggarwal was published in the Economic Times on April 10, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Take the case of BITS Pilani graduate Sriram Kanuni, for instance, who decided to come back to India after spending 12 years with SAP in Germany. His family thought he was out of his mind, but he wanted to work for India and primarily serve Indian clients.

His core vision hasn't wavered five years down the line, but he has been forced to move a large part of his company's intellectual property (IP) to the US, just to get a better valuation for his next round of funding. And his is not an isolated case. "Global investors seem to value companies with patents in the US much higher. Therefore, it makes more sense to shift patents out of India, in case you're looking to raise money or exit the company," Kanuni, who is the CEO and co-founder of Arteria Technologies, said. Major Indian startups such as Flipkart, Myntra and ZipDial, which have either raised over a billion dollars or exited, already have their IPs outside the country. Experts say that is one of the reasons that attracted investors.

"If a company with its IP in India is acquired by an international firm, and post acquisition the buyer wishes to transfer the IP to a different jurisdiction, such transfer would need to be at a fair value decided by the government and the company is taxed at the rate of 34% on that," one of the bankers who was part of a large exit told ET.

"For tech-centric companies where the value of IP would comprise over 70-80% of their value, such high taxes can possibly make them unattractive for potential investors," they added. With better valuation and exits in mind, startups are moving out their innovation to countries such as Singapore and the US, leaving behind very little intellectual property that the country can proudly call its own.

"You would want to incorporate somewhere with a respected reputation for maintaining legal protection when it comes to copyright and trademarks, especially with global licensees or partners," said Sharad Devarajan, co-founder and CEO of character entertainment company Graphic India, which is incorporated in Singapore. "Incorporation in a country like the US where potential for M&A is higher, especially for core technology startups, will generally make it more attractive to potential buyers as it avoids a lot of legal and financial paperwork," said Brij Bhasin, India investment lead of Japanese venture capital firm Rebright Partners.

Investor concerns over IP are well founded. "Indian courts aren't uniform when it comes to developing jurisprudence around copyright and patent infringement," explained Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bengaluru based research organization Centre for Internet and Society.

"There is a high chance that a judge who doesn't understand the details would give an injunction. Then the loss of six months, etc., can be quite expensive, because in six months' time your competitor might eat into all of your market," he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/economic-times-april-10-2015-evelyn-fok-varun-aggarwal-better-intellectual-property-values-luring-indian-startups-abroad

Best Practices Meet 2015

praskrishna — 2015-07-17T13:08:28Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/best-practices-meet-2015.pdf