Yani! The Bosphorus People

Yani! This is one of the few words common between the Turkish lexicon and ours, and the connotation too is same. And it could well have been brought to India by some muslims of Turkish descent who made India their home centuries ago.

The bosphoreans is how I tend to call them, due to the unique feature of the bosphorus, seem to be basically happy people. Having travelled to more than 100 countries, never have I seen the sea meander into the landmass as it does in Istanbul, more in the likeness of a river than so much as the sea. While it does not betray the vastness that is typical of a sea, yet it is benign more in the likeness of a river traversing the plains, than a sea.

Why this is called the bosphorus and not simply a strait is a thought that continues to intrigue me, and I am sure the answer would be in my younger son’s geography book. But that is a matter for another time.

If my sense of dates is correct, I should be visiting this country after a gap of 2 years, and my impression is that headscarves have increased from then. While this development has time and again been alluded to by the Economist, and if that newspaper is even in some measure if not in full, taken as a barometer of changing times, the Turkish nation is indeed at crossroads, and may soon make its tryst with its Islamic past.

While you can debate, how much of growth and wealth are directly attributable to its second term Prime Minister Tayyip Edrogan, the signs the growth are multiple and too evident to be missed. That, this academician – footballer turned politician, ex-Mayor of Istanbul, personifies Islamic nationalism of large section of society is clearly a matter of record.

He can also be attributed to wean Turkey away from its wannabe like desire to enter the European Union. Today, Turkey is more at peace with being what it is, than chasing a dream that continued to elude it for decades.

For those like me, who believe in the cyclicality of civilizations, Turkey having dominated the European continent for more than 1200 years, approximately 600 each as the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, could well be sowing the seeds of its economic and political resurgence under the Edrogan regime. 

THE SALIENCE OF INCREMENTAL PATENTING

Each time there is an invention of salience, it invariably IS accompanied by a pandemonium of patents. When I say, salient, I mean inventions of the types of Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Elva Edison.

The rush of patents in the US came in spurts.

The fungibility of IP assets is huge. By fungibility is meant the exchangeability or interchangeability of assets. That increases the valuation of an asset and also its attractiveness.

Whether the exponential increase in patent filing could have been augmented by the failure or demise of the open source movement, is indeed a moot point, and I doubt if anyone would have an assessment of what the impact possibly could be.

1982 and 1998 are two milestone years for patenting on the wall street. In 1982, Merril Lynch received a patent for its cash management system. In the year 1998, Signature Financial Group received a patent for its hub and spoke model for fund transfer and management. This broke free the long standing myth that Patents could be granted for tangible products only.

Phase I of patent filings : 1880 - 1900

While, India was still convalescing from the rigorous clamp down on the natives by the colonial machinery as an aftermath of the revolt of 1857, America was surging ahead in one of its most innovative phases, having filed 20,000 patents in 1880. This patents were all based around the inventions of the steam engine, telegraph, telephone and electric power. There was a spurt of about 60 pct (from 12,000 to 20,000) in the filing patents.

Phase II of patent Filing : 1902 – 1920

This phase saw a second resurgence in the patents being filed, from 20,000 per annum to 40,000 per annum in America due to the inventions and advances made in Flying (you could still not call it Aviation) and automobile industries.

Phase III of patent filing : 1960s – 1980s

Due to the advances in the plastics, aerospace and computer industry, the filing per annum of patents increased from 40,000 to 60,000

While the most important role played by patents is the protection of profit for the inventor, imparting to him the first mover advantage, the downside is frivolous patenting that on many occasions results in curbing innovation, and denying the benefit of incremental innovations to the people. Mindlessly granting patents to the patentee often stifles academic freedom and monopolizes technological innovation.

Just as 40 years ago, patents on biotechnology, particularly the strains were very controversial, 20 years ago, it was the increased patenting of the business processes just as we saw in the case of Merril Lynch, that courted controversy.

But the culture of patenting is gaining strength. In the pre 1970s era, it was only the big companies that used to file patents and often in collaboration with Universities. In the 70s, the smaller companies constituted about 5 pct o patenting, but just 20 years later, 25 pct of the patents were being filed by smaller companies.

The Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Law needs to be admired as a piece of bureaucratic foresight and prudence, as patent fencing and ever-greening are increasingly becoming hallmarks of life cycle management by big corporates.

Several dimensions of the dictat of Supreme Court of India are noteworthy in the Glivec Patent case. While it admonishes Novartis on its audacity of challenging the sense of balance of the Indian patent act, it took complete cognizance of the economic benefit that denial of such patent ever-greening brought to the patient population of the country.

It is a matter of time that several emerging markets, which today are feeling stifled by the MNC led patenting environment, will adopt provisions in full or in some measure, similar to the section of 3(d) of the Indian patent act. And on this I would only say MNCs beware.

Isn't Mamta devoid of Mamta

My instinct is often correct. Instinctively, I always felt, Mamta Bannerjee was not a good human being. And her reaction to the recent death of a student sheers what I always felt about her. She is devoid of emotion, ruthless and very clinical.

A young student dies in a manner that seems to be extremely painful, and she alludes to the incident as ‘petty”.

To not be able to distinguish mass leaders from rabble - rousers, is indeed one of the acknowledged problems of democracies

Shame on her. Shame on those who voted her to power. Shame on the system that helps her perpetuate such power.