M A I N   N E W S

Two yrs after launch, Govt asks: Who owns Aakash tablet IPR?
Aditi Tandon/TNS

New Delhi, March 29
Two years after the world’s cheapest internet access device, the Aakash tablet, was launched in India, claims over its ownership have begun to haunt the government. The Human Resource Development Ministry has initiated an inquiry to find out who really owns the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the Aakash tablet project.

These inquiries, highly-placed sources said, are rooted in the repeated claims over ownership of the tablet design by Canada-based IT firm Datawind, whose chairman Suneet Singh Tuli has said on more than one occasion that his company owns the Aakash Intellectual Property Rights.

If that be the case, how is Aakash’s one of the biggest achievements of the UPA government and that of India? Sources in the Human Resource Development Ministry say they are digging into Aakash files to arrive at a legally sound position on the IPR ownership of the tablet if the matter was to go to court tomorrow.

“The project was born out of the government’s urge to provide a cheap internet access device for academic purposes. But so far, we have nothing on record to show that we own the Aakash IPR. We are in the process of finding out and will soon be in a position to settle the question of ownership which, according to us, rests with the government,” a Human Resource Development Ministry official said.

The Aakash project, the Human Resource Development Minister had recently said, was being given another look with respect to viability.

It is further learnt that the Ministry has, in a letter to the Ministry of External Affairs, raised objections to Datawind owner’s claims over Aakash tablet’s Intellectual Property Rights in global forums.

In a recent statement, Tuli had said his company owned the copyright of the tablet and alleged that contract manufacturer of the tablet — India-based Quad Electronics — was violating its right by signing a direct agreement with IIT Rajasthan for development of the device.

“Datawind’s team internally developed Aakash and sub-contracted the assembly of Aakash tablet to Quad Electronics, based on its own design. Therefore, the Intellectual Property Rights of the tablet belong to Datawind,” Tuli had said.

The first version of Aakash was designed in collaboration between IIT Rajasthan and Datawind and Hyderabad-based Quad was the producer. It was launched by former Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal on October 5, 2011. Aakash 2 was launched on November 12, 2012. The latest version is being developed by IIT Bombay.

Tuli has been maintaining that only the programming and assembly of Aakash parts happened in India — something Human Resource Development Ministry is not buying. The Ministry has already written to IIT Bombay to take legal action against Datawind if the latter fails to supply 1 lakh Aakash orders in time. So far, only about 20,000 pieces have come.