R K DEWAN & CO, COMPLETE SPECTRUM OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SERVICES FOR CORPORATE HOUSES

The very first step for any corporate house is to manage and protect its intellectual property rights (IPR). This is the only way that it will be able to establish its presence in India. This step has to be orchestrated as a significant part of its asset growing strategy.

In the era of cut-throat competition, owning notable intellectual property rights can be effectual for marketing purposes and could set your business apart distinctively giving you the authority to generate revenue. India is a land of various intellectual properties protected under different laws.

Protection of Intellectual Property requires the completion of complicated documents and adherence to several legalities. This demands considerable expertise in the field for ensuring fast and effectual registration. This expertise is offered by the professionals at R K Dewan& Co for over 75 years now. They have been delivering insightful advice and services to assist their clients in upholding and protecting their Intellectual Property Rights throughout India and globally.

Presently under the leadership of Dr. Mohan Dewan, this firm was started by his father in 1942 in Mumbai as an IP law practice firm. It later was expanded to other cities in India and China and today the strength of the team of experts in the firm is over 175 people. The professionals are spread over Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, and Indore in India.

THE MAN WHO CARRIED THE BEACON AHEAD

Dr. Mohan Dewan, Principal, R K Dewan& Co is a practicing advocate and jurist. He has been associated with this field for more than five decades now and for him, the motivation to be a part of this field is the fact that it is diverse. He is a registered Patent & Trademark attorney. Dr.Dewan has the unique distinction of being an exceptional litigator along with being an expert in patent & trademark prosecution. Having drafted and successfully prosecuted several thousand patent specifications, he has come to be acknowledged as a specialist in patent specification drafting. He pioneered anti-counterfeiting strategies and litigation in India. His areas of expertise also extend to negotiating technology transfers and IP valuation.

IP gives you access to each form of technology in the world. In this field, you have to be qualified in both technology and law. So most of the people in this firm are dual degree holders, they are Lawyers and at the same time PhDs, Doctors, Mechanical Engineers, Scientist and the like.

In an intellectually stimulating conversation with The CEO Magazine, Dr. Mohan Dewan talks about his journey, the firm, overall experience, plans and more;

The CEO: How has the professional journey transformed you over the years?

Dr.Dewan:Working for so long in this profession has not changed me at all; it has brought me learning experiences but not changes. You learn each day in this field, something more than what you knew yesterday. Inventors are our biggest teachers. People who come to us are inventors, they are involved in inventing something new, and if something new has been created it means the knowledge of it is yet to be imparted. So for us, it is a privilege to be associated with inventors who teach us new technology every day, multiple times in diverse ways. Different inventors enlighten us on different inventions. I have been lucky throughout to be associated with people who have been a part of this profession and still are with us.

The CEO:Do you like competition or feel it is stringent or any competition at all?

Dr.Dewan:I would love to have competition. It is very lonely to be inthe top position and I am saying this out of utter humility, unfortunately, some people who have the same learning set, they are outside India. I have achieved a point in my professional career where it is difficult to share a common aspect where you could have a healthy discussion with others in the field. There is no competition for our firm. The people who work in our firm are poached continuously even on payment of cost.

The CEO:What difference do you offer to your client that others do not?

Dr.Dewan:We provide an all-round experience, a strategy starting from how to create your IP, manage it; how to take it forward; how to give it a business model and how to protect it. Each step is taken care of. You need vision whenever an IP is created. This vision must continue right from birth, to nurturing it, to taking it forward to its growth. No one in the field provides all these services under one umbrella. It may have been present in the previous era, or generation but currently, no one carries this vision. Some people are specialists and super-specialist but there are no generalists. None today is talking about handling or looking after different aspects, but we make sure we do that and maintain a balance.

The CEO:How tedious is the process of creating a new IP?

Dr.Dewan:Today technology has become a different subject that demands time to be comprehended well with the right mix of effort and energy. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a new IP, to create a new invention. Several things have to be taken care of like how to give a form, how to protect it, how to write it accurately, we call it Patent Drafting for example which is also a subject that I teach various students. How to draft a patent application so that it can withstand the onslaught ……….from the initial examination process and then when it is litigated when it goes out in the industry to protect it. That is as far as patents are concerned. Similarly, in trademarks, you have to see that the trademarks are properly protected how they are created in the first instance and taken forward.

The CEO:Do you feel the trends have changed over the years?

Dr.Dewan:Business trends always change. Indian industry going outside and protecting their IP was something that was very little heard of about 10 -15 years ago. There were concerned with the domestic market, copying international products. Now the whole thinking has changed, to stand up to international competition, they need to protect their marks. I mean, China was not what it was 15-20 years ago what it is now. So a lot of industries change. I would say trends keep on changing year after year; day after day sometimes it changes in one day. It is continuously changing because it is organic.

The CEO:How do evaluate failure; do you have any personal experience?

Dr.Dewan:There are a lot of personal failures in your relationships with people. Sometimes your professional life is so different that it takes a toll on your personal life. There are times when it becomes difficult to understand the nature of balance between both and you can't find the blend. Like I have a tight, hectic schedule, I work from 4 AM to 11 PM in the night 6 days a week at least and sometimes even on Sunday I am working which eventually does take a toll on your personal life. People near and around you need to understand why you need to do what you need to do and I would often tell all that I am satisfied with what I have been able to help the client with.

The CEO:How do you assess priorities at work?

Dr.Dewan:A lot of our work is time-bound. Inventions have to be filed and protected as soon as possible because we are the first people to learn about them and to disclose them to the Patent Office. Industries come to us for this and it would witness a standstill if we don't protect their application. So we come in first on the scene. Having said that, even before the salespeople, we have a team of experts dedicated to their jobs, they are provided with an environment of work where they feel at home. My proficient team does not come to theiroffice; they come to their second home. We ensure that they are provided with anything and everything, be it financial support or guidance, we are at their disposal. Each member of the team is more like family and not an employee for me.

The CEO:What motivates you to keep coming back with the same zeal?

Dr.Dewan:Just being alive is motivation. I am grateful to be alive every morning and I am grateful for one more day that I get to serve people and take their lives forward. That itself is the motivation. Money has never been a motivation. It comes whenever you work hard. The motivation is in the third of every month, every person working in my office has their salary credited to their accounts on time.

The CEO:What plans are chalked out for the coming time?

Dr.Dewan:The plan is to take it as it comes. I would like to help as many people as possible during the life that is granted to me and take it to the next level of assistance we offer. We are a service organization. Our primary motto is service, Individual/personal service to a client.

The CEO:What amount of credit do you provide your employees for the success of your firm?

Dr.Dewan:We do have an attrition rate that happens in our firm only because other firms want to take our employees, plus I keep training my employees for their betterment. We have a lot of my students all over the place in the Government offices and various companies and firms. I love training people from scratch. We generally don't take people from other firms, whenever we have tried in need, it has not been successful.

The CEO:Have your ethics and morals hampered ever with a client or otherwise in a situation?

Dr.Dewan:I have only one value that is honesty and we have never wavered from that when it comes to it. I think we need to be bluntly honest regardless of who you are dealing with. Be it a Government Official or your team or if it is the client, it is important to put across the table when they are wrong. I think that the issue is that in our line of business, documents and evidence never lie, people lie. We try to correct that. That is the one value that matters. And everything is surrounded by it. First thing is that you have to be honest to yourself, then to the immediate people around you and then to the whole World. If there is one value that we would take forward, it would be honesty.

The CEO:Do you feel research and development is significant for growth?

Dr.Dewan:R&D is something we are working with. It is continuously taking place because all our principal clients are orchestrated by R&D. I work for the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Information Technology, Agricultural Ministry, NRDC that's all related to R&D and then also at individual R&Ds centres with whether it's Mahindra, Tata, Reliance,HPCL, we are involved with our clients on a day to day basis. It is an external R&D. Internally we are continuously working on our R&D. We are one of the few IP firms which have ISO recognition so we work according to the latest ISO standards. There is a continuous creation of new rules, methods, consolidation techniques and technologies to improve the line of communication with clients whether it's digital or otherwise.

Dr. Mohan Dewan is also a musician by heart and likes to play the piano and cook, when he is at home enveloped by his people. He likes to spend his free time chalking out an innovative menu and try his hand at different cuisines from Chinese to Italian to Cambodian and Indian origins. He believes that it is essential to comprehend an individual's body language and hence he teaches that subject and reads as much as he can about it. 

With a belief in securing cost-optimized IPR for clients and striving ceaselessly towards the end, R K Dewan and Co are meticulously approaching towards an absolute spectrum of property services for a corporate houses with a client-centric culture, personalized professionalism, and customized commercialism.