BANGALORE : While filing for patents is part of the business ethos of global IT corporations, Indian companies and SMBs in particular have been slow to realize the merits of filing for patents and preserving Intellectual Property (IP).

To help such companies, especially those working in areas like R&D, telecom, biotech and IT, Brain League, a start-up incubated by NS Raghavan Center for Entrepreneurial Leaning, IIM Bangalore provides a host of specialized services. These include helping out with the patent process and developing programs to integrate IP into a company's workflow and audits. Unlike law firms, Brain League claims to work with technology experts and looks at IP and related services from a management perspective.

"There are not many firms that cater to the needs of SMEs. This segment, being small, cannot afford IP departments of their own unlike biggies in the market, the main reason being the management of additional overhead expenses. It is also possible that since they are in a start-up mode, they would not possess any IP. Still, they would need to prepare proactively for the future to guard against competition, "said Brain League IP services MD Arun K Narasani.

He further opined that apart from protecting their knowledge assets, patenting would be useful for companies in terms of valuation for business decisions such as mergers and acquisitions, investments or sell-offs and also in cases where competitors indulge in "evergreening" of patents. Evergreening refers to a situation where a manufacturer (especially pharma drug industry) builds on patent protection by obtaining separate 20-year patents on multiple characteristics of a single product.

Brain League plans to create awareness on the importance of patents through seminars and workshops. Typically, it costs companies around $75,000 for a US patent and around Rs 50,000 for an Indian patent. Brain League claims that it can bring down the cost of processing the US patent by 50 percent -60 percent.