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Handling IPR Issues
Continued from page: 1
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Case Study: IPR issues
Dr Achuthsankar S. Nair
FRIENDS Integrated Citizen Service Centre-the prestigious e-governance project of the Government of Kerala, which has won laurels from all quarters-got entangled in an IPR muddle in 2002. FRIENDS is a single window system where citizens can effect remittances for various government services including electricity charges, water charges, vehicle taxes, and university fees. The Govt. of Kerala, Kerala State IT Mission (a body floated by the IT Department) and C-DIT (Centre for development of Imaging Technology, an autonomous center of Govt of Kerala which is involved in many e-governance projects) were dragged into a controversy over the IPR of FRIENDS software when a private agency made a claim on the IPR of the software.
The controversy is related to the pilot phase of the FRIENDS project, done in 1999. The State IT mission entrusted the work of setting up FRIENDS centers, including creating the software, to C-DIT. During this phase, two private agencies (including a multinational software firm) were brought into this flagship e-governance project of Government of Kerala, without any formal written agreement, specifically stating the implications, ownerships and future costs and dependencies. All the 'services' were to be 'free of cost'. Subsequently, the local agency, which was involved in the pilot project, was asked to customize the software when FRIENDS was replicated in all districts. While at the pilot stage there were no MOUs, in this second stage an MOU and specific work order were released with certain ambiguous reference to IPR. Later in 2002, when an alternative software, with full rights to C-DIT and no future strings attached was attempted to be made by C-DIT, it was stalled based on a criminal complaint that the new software was a copy of the original one.
An officer from the India office of the multinational software monopoly issued a certificate in support of the private agency's claim over the FRIENDS software.
Even though C-DIT had clarified that the FRIENDS software will be used only by the government to collect revenue for the various arms of the government, and the same being a government work, Government. of Kerala is the exclusive owner of the software and the IPR involved, litigations continued. The height to which the claims went to can be gauged by the fact that the private agency made a representation to the Kerala IT mission to blacklist C-DIT and hand over the running of the full FRIENDS project to them!
Incidentally, C-DIT has been directly running the FRIENDS project without direct or indirect involvement of any private agency since the controversy arose, and has been successfully modifying and expanding the FRIENDs software as per the directions of the Kerala State IT Mission.
On 23rd February 2004, the Hon High Court of Kerala declared the FRIENDS software to be exclusive property of the Government of Kerala, in OP No. 9071 of 2003. The court held that a computer software developed for Government purposes will always be a Government work falling under Section 2(k) of the Copy Right Act, irrespective of whether the author is a contractor or subcontractor appointed by the Government directly or through any agency.
However, the private agency has filed an appeal against the orders of the single bench .
If there were sufficient IPR awareness in this instance, an explicit and comprehensive MOU in the first phase would have avoided litigation. The lesson to be learned is basic-there is nothing called a free lunch, especially when software IPR is involved.
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