MUMBAI: India’s research story in higher education is often told through the rise in patent applications. But a closer reading of data—from the India Patent Office for 2020–2025, with a sharper lens on 2020-2023 outcomes (as it takes an average two years to grant a patent under the expedited route)—suggests a more uncomfortable reality: the system increasingly rewards activity, not outcomes.At first glance, the contrast seems stark. The Indian Institutes of Technology, taken collectively, filed for 6,558 patents in 2020-2025 and were granted 2,806, an approval rate of 43%. Narrow the window to 2020-23, and the picture looks even rosier: 3,331 patent publications and 2,118 patents granted, pushing the success rate to 64%. The premier Indian Institute of Science mirrors this trajectory, successfully converting 257 of its 379 applications in 2020-23, an approval rate of nearly 68%. So do the National Institutes of Technology, which collectively published 2,333 patent applications in 2020-2025 and secured 949 grants, a success rate of 41%. In 2020-23, 933 of NITs’ patent publications yielded 626 grants, a success rate of 67.1%, comparable to India’s top public research universities.Now compare this with high-volume private universities. Lovely Professional University leads in numbers with 7,096 patent applications over five years. Yet only 164 granted, a success rate of 2.3%. In 2020-23, the picture was barely any better: 5,774 publications, 164 grants, and a success rate of a mere 2.8%. Chandigarh University shows a sharper skew—5,318 filings since 2020, only 45 grants overall. In 2020-23, it published 2,350 patents and received 44, a success rate of 1.87%.An education expert from Ambattur, Tamil Nadu, who analysed the data, wondered, “Are patents being filed as innovation assets or as metrics for rankings and visibility?” For serious innovation, according to experts like him, patenting can never be just an academic exercise as it requires sustained financial investment in labs, hiring of researchers and legal support to achieve successful conversion and technology transfer.Currently, several privately-run institutions appear to be filing for patents on an industrial scale but have almost nothing to show on conversion. Galgotias University, which exhibited a Chinese dogbot at the India AI Impact summit, published 2,233 patents over five years but secured two grants; in 2020-22, it had filed 1,752 applications and received none. Shobhit Institute of Engineering and Technology has a similar story: 961 filings, zero approvals—both cumulatively and in 2020-23. Jain University and the Chandigarh Group of Colleges also sit at 0.6% or lower overall, with zero success rate in 2020-23 despite four-figure publication counts.V Ramgopal Rao, group VC of BITS Pilani and former director of IIT-Delhi, while maintaining that some patents take 8-9 years before they are granted, said, “Filing patents, prosecuting them and keeping them alive costs real money. Turning applications into granted patents and then into technologies that industry is willing to license demands well-funded labs, experienced researchers, legal muscle and years of sustained investment. When the financial commitment does not match the claims being made, the gap has a way of revealing itself.”Yet, there are outliers among private institutions too who seem to be pushing research. Vellore Institute of Technology published 2,879 patents over five years and received 63 grants, a grant rate of 2.2%; while in 2020-23, its conversion stood higher at 22% (61 grants from 279 publications). Sathyabama Institute of Science & Technology also filed 878 patents cumulatively, securing 18 (2.1%), while its 2020-23 success rate rose to 13.5%. Graphic Era University’s overall success rate is 4%, while in 2020-23 it was at 10%.The process of filing for patents itself has been relaxed over the past few years. Under the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2021, educational institutions became eligible for an 80% reduction in patent filing and prosecution fees, causing a surge in applications by universities. Examination timelines—from the date a patent is published to the time it’s granted—also fell from an average 72 months in 2015 to 12-30 months.Achal Agrawal, founder of India Research Watch said it is time the system addresses the skew created by academic ranking and rating agencies like NIRF and NAAC which count the number of patent applications filed. “They should give substantial weightage to the percentage of patents granted instead. Otherwise it incites institutes to file frivolous patents to bolster up the numbers leading to loss of taxpayers’ money, in the form of subsidy, as well as waste of patent examiners’ time.“
