The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises expects to meet and achieve the target towards setting up 40 Intellectual Property facilitation Centres (IPFC) in the country before the end of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan in 2012.

All the centers will provide information and other important details regarding intellectual property rights to small business units and will comprise of legal and technical experts. 

The facilitation centre aims to enhance the competitiveness and development of MSME industry through the advisory services. In India, the MSME sector contributes about 45% of the manufacturing output; about 40% of the total export of the country and 9% to country’s GDP.

Presently, 15 such centers have been approved by the Government in places like Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mysore, New Delhi and Pune and additional four centers are expected to come up within a month.