Calcutta, Jan. 30: IIT Kharagpur has signed a technical collaboration agreement with George Washington University for fine-tuning the curriculum for its intellectual property rights law school.

The deal, signed in Bangalore, also covers faculty training and teaching.

Probir K. Gupta, the dean of the Vinod Gupta School of Management, the 13-year-old institution at IIT Kharagpur, said the agreement marks the “commencement of cooperation between India and the US in the emerging field of comprehensive formal education in intellectual property laws in the country”.

The IIT Kharagpur Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law will be the first such law school in the country specifically dealing with intellectual property rights. “We have already designed the course outlines,” Gupta said but added that “inputs” from George Washington University, which has one of the foremost law schools in America, “are extremely welcome”.

“They have been dealing with IPR issues for a while now and are well-versed in protection laws,” he said.

The school is expected to start academic courses by July. The starting programme will be a three-year, six-semester, full-time residential course, leading to a degree of Bachelor of Law in technology and intellectual property law. The school will also have a one-and-a-half-year non-residential course, to be based in Calcutta and Bhubaneswar, leading to a postgraduate diploma in intellectual property law.

“In recent years, we have been witnessing an increasing convergence between IP law and business,” Gupta said.

Vinod Gupta, benefactor of the IIT Kharagpur management school, has pledged $1 million towards the IPR law school.

Kalyan Chakravarti, project leader of the task force for setting up the law school, said: “The technical collaboration agreement will help in bringing up the law school of IIT Kharagpur to world-class standards.”