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As more patents are filed in India, leading intellectual property support service company Computer Patent Annuities Ltd is looking to invest $50 million here over three years. Peter Sewell, CEO of Computer Patent Annuities, tells M Rajendran about his company, which looks after more than 40,000 clients worldwide, handling in excess of 2 million patent, design and trademark records, will add about 10,000 employees in India, to offer para-legal services. Excerpts:
 
 
How big is the intellectual property support service market worldwide? And in India?
The worldwide market is about $190 billion and in India it is estimated at $60 million. This is estimated to grow 10 fold by 2012.     
 
Computer Patent Annuities was founded in 1969. When did you start looking at India?
We focussed on India around 2002 and about 18 months ago acquired Intellevate, which had an office here. India as patent market is not large today, but this is going to change as it is becomes a major exporting country. We would like to double our operations in the next few years and we have ambitions is to increase our staff to 10,000 from the current 214. 
 
Do you plan more acquisitions for increasing your staff strength?
If that can help us reach the 10,000 mark, certainly. We plan to make the Intellevate acquisition into a 1 billion pound valuation worldwide and the India operations will play a major role. 
 
Are you going to be focussed only on intellectual property in India?
No, we will be moving to consultations in other legal services. This is important because our competitors will soon move into India and we want to be ahead. 
 
What kind of investment have you set aside for India?
About $15 million immediately, and another $50 million in the next three years. We will bring in more for acquisitions if they help to meet our targets in India.  
 
What value addition will you bring to the operations in India?
We have companies like Microsoft and Intel as our clients, and they are testament to our quality of service. In terms of technology, we have three companies that sell software designed to help us and our clients work from the same platform.