Tata Consultancy Services has significantly increased its patent filings in 2011-12. It filed 460 patents in several countries last financial year, thus taking the total patents filed to 855.
India's top software exporter said that its intellectual property strategy seeks to build an effective portfolio of IP assets for future ‘monetisation, collaboration and risk mitigation.'
The total number of patents granted as at March 31 was 72 while it was 68 as at March 31, 2011. The company had 855 patents filed in multiple jurisdictions as at March 31 (448 as at March 31, 2011), says the company's 2011-12 annual report.
Last year, a model-based approach for IP management, invention valuation and collaborative mining of invention was developed and deployed across the company. A centralised IP asset registry was also set up to government IP asset usage and value realisation. The reuse programme and corporate IPR cell have been integrated in to corporate IPR group to facilitate and drive IP creation, valuation and utilisation. The first module for integrated IP management systems was released to administer the patent filing process.
Innovation through strong research and development continues to be a major focus area for TCS. “We are increasing our investment in many areas, including new sensor-based technologies, intelligent infrastructure platforms for genomics research, information fusion for enterprise and green technologies. This is resulting in more IPR being generated by your company,” said Mr N. Chandrasekaran, CEO, TCS, in the annual report.