A black market for ‘fake patents’ is a new poison in Indian research
A worrying new trend of ‘fake patents’, in which education companies sell thousands of patents registered in the UK to academics in India and elsewhere, has raised concerns among research integrity experts.
The issue of ‘fake patents’ was pointed out in a report published in the magazine. International Journal of Integrity in Education. “Eight firms… are likely involved in the sale of thousands of UK-registered designs to Indian academics for the purpose of academic reputation manipulation,” wrote authors from the UK and US.
Patent offices do not review design applications for novelty, novelty, or uniqueness and award them quickly. This differs from the more stringent process for patents.
Pay to be an inventor
Subhash Lakhotia, Distinguished Professor, Laboratory of Cytogenetics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, said patents are often used to commercialize a new discovery.
Not all patents applied for are accepted, and only a small fraction of those accepted are used by the industry.
Prof. is also on the advisory board of India Research Watch, an Indian research watchdog. “Therefore, the real value of a patent is when it is used by industry for a process or product,” Lakhotia said.
‘Spurious’ patents, filed without any original research by the person (or persons) on whose behalf the patent application is filed, “refer to an entity that does not exist,” said Prof. Lakhotia. “This unhealthy and…unethical behavior is encouraged by shady companies that file patents or act as facilitating entities, selling authorship of a patent for a non-existent organization to academics who earn academic points during academic excellence assessment.”
inside International Journal of Integrity in Education In the paper, the researchers highlighted firms selling inventor positions on design patents in the UK; however, ‘sales’ were also recorded from India and Australia.
However, these countries do not grant design patents; Reese Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Science and Innovation at Northwestern University in the US and one of the authors of the paper highlighting the problem, said they published the design registrations.
According to him, design patents issued in the US must undergo novelty review and have a high chance of being rejected. Design registrations, on the other hand, are generally granted with minimal scrutiny.
‘Some lies’
Prof. “Forged patents, like fake research publications, have become a global nuisance in recent years,” Lakhotia said.
He argues that such “unethical practices” involve individual scientists and institutions in terms of the number of papers they publish, how many patents they apply for, etc. He added that it was fueled by initiatives that rate “without concern for quality”.
In the resulting ‘ranking rush’ some unscrupulous organizations exploit individuals’ or institutions’ desire to achieve better rankings by selling fake patents and fake research papers.
In the United Kingdom, Dr. The design registrations that Richardson’s team examined were generally granted in about 11 days.
“What clients are really buying are ownership positions in these design registrations,” he said. “Moreover, since these records are for ‘designs’, they cover how an object looks, not how it works.”
So when an academic buys “inventorship” for a “UK design patent,” “a number of lies are exposed,” Dr. added. Richardson. “The academic did not invent anything, let alone work, the device does not exist, what they received is not a patent, and even if it worked, it does not cover the functionality of the product.”
However, these academics can help their employers get promoted by telling them that they have received an “international patent”.
Does India stand out?
Dr. “I suspect this could happen anywhere, but to my knowledge the sale of fake patents has only occurred on the academic black market in India,” Richardson said.
Prof. Three factors contribute to this dubious distinction, Lakhotia said. These are: (i) the large population seeking education and employment, (ii) the use of quantitative measures when evaluating performance without any serious quality assessment, and (iii) the use of quantitative parameters by almost all international and national academic ranking bodies.
Anant Bhan, an adjunct professor and bioethicist at Yenepoya (default) University in Mangaluru, said “this is probably the growing problem…points to the use of mechanisms and loopholes to bolster resumes and metrics that enable career advancement and help boost institutional rankings.”
Dr. Bhan added that in India, fierce competition between institutions for better ranks and among academics for better jobs makes unethical practices more attractive.
“This is worrying because [such activity] It goes against fundamental principles of integrity in science, and the misuse of patent inventor credits for academic manipulation is a deterrent to genuine scientific work that focuses on innovation and patent creation as part of this path,” added Dr. Bhan.
Dr. “Other related issues have also arisen due to India’s insistence on patent ranking,” Richardson added. “For example, many private Indian universities apply for thousands of utility patents in India in the hope of increasing their numbers, often more than the IITs combined. But very few (less than 2%) of these patents are actually granted.”
resist the problem
The most important and urgently needed step to prevent the increasing danger of fake patents and documents is to stop all corporate rankings based on quantitative data. Prof. In the absence of independent verification, institutions unethically inflate this data, Lakhotia said.
“The mere filing of a patent, such as a paper newly submitted for publication, should not be used for evaluation,” he explained.
He said only patents used by industry should be included in the evaluation.
He further added, “Institutions that brazenly facilitate such fake patents and research publications must be taken seriously.”
Dr. “We need stronger mechanisms to detect, catalog and respond to scientific misconduct,” Bhan said.
He added that while some research funders and some regulators in India, such as the Anusandhan National Research Foundation in the state, are considering using recalls as indicators, “we need to step up efforts” and have an agile regulatory oversight and management system.
(A retraction is the withdrawal of a published research article because its content is no longer valid or reliable.)
Dr. “We need a comprehensive approach to ensure that our academic training programs include a clear understanding of why such approaches are unethical and unacceptable, institutional-level mechanisms to deter the use of bogus academic manipulation tactics, and strong enforcement and action at the level of regulators and funders, including blacklisting and action on institutions and their rankings,” Bhan continued.
Dr. Richardson, Prof. Echoing Lakhotia, he said the best way to counter this problem would be for the University Grants Commission to significantly reduce, if not completely eliminate, the role of IP filing metrics in Indian university rankings and clarify that design registrations, copyright registrations and filed patents are not included in these numbers.
“As long as individuals and institutions are evaluated based on quantitative metrics, there will be those who sell the opportunity to manipulate those metrics,” he noted.
TV Padma is a science journalist based in New Delhi.
