Now, for its sixth orbit, says Mr Raju, the industry needs to demonstrate “a leadership mindset” and the ability to innovate.<sup>76</sup> Satyam’s “sixth orbit” of international leadership is only possible in an environment that the international business community deems trustworthy. It is hard to see leadership emerging from a country whose enforcement of its laws remains lackluster. If India wishes to assume leadership positions in any of the technologies or industries impelling its economic growth, it will have to act like a leader. At the moment, that means leading the developing world in understanding how to make IPRs applicable to the needs of a poor country in the information age.

The requirements of modernization do not mean that India must mimic the U.S. system of performing a full-blown examination of every patent application, though India might well decide that such a system serves its interests. There is an alternative model, known as a patent registration system, that contrasts with the U.S. model of a patent examination system. Many countries, including Australia, Singapore, and some EU member states, require few substantive inquiries prior to granting patents. Australia also launched another interesting experiment in 2001: an “innovation patent” that provides simple, inexpensive protection for inventions deemed insufficiently inventive to meet the threshold required for standard patents. Though this experiment is too new to have generated meaningful data capable of assessing its merit, India should leverage the inquiries and recommendations leading to such experiments when considering their propriety in the Indian context.<sup>77</sup> The differences between pure registration and pure examination systems, however, are well enough understood to be immediately informative.

In a pure registration system a country’s patent office simply grants patents to all applicants who meet procedural filing requirements, without inquiring into the novelty, nonobviousness, or general suitability of patenting the claimed innovation. These patents then have the force of law, but courts asked to enforce them need show little deference to the expertise latent in the patent office—precisely because the patent office applied little or no expertise prior to granting the patent. The burden of proof thus rests entirely with the patentee, who must convince the court of the patent’s validity, as well as of the defendant’s infringement.

Under the full-blown examination model that the United States uses, Patent Office personnel apply significant expertise, and courts typically defer to their greater knowledge by presuming that a patent is valid unless a defendant can prove otherwise. The choice of a registration or an examination system has a profound effect on a country’s administrative and judicial agencies, as well as on the cost of maintaining its patent system. Registration systems speed applications along, proliferate weak, improvident, and unenforceable patents, reduce administrative time and costs, restrict full examination to the relatively few patents subject to litigation, and increase the demands on the judiciary and the costs of litigation. Examination systems delay patent grants, typically lead to higher-quality patents, ease enforcement, promote negotiated licenses rather than litigation, and reduce the burden on the courts.

> 76 _The Economist_ , “Virtual Champions,” June 1, 2006.

> 77 _See_ Australian Government, IP Australia, “The Innovation Patent,”

> http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/what_innovation.shtml.

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