The Case of the Real-Life Zootopia
As we progress through the seemingly happy utopia that is Zootopia, we encounter the first signs of exclusion of a particular community: the reptiles.
By Disha Banerjee
The latest discussion on patents can easily lead us into a conversation about Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde, and Gary De’Snake adventuring through Zootopia in search of a long-lost patent. If you are unfamiliar with these characters, they are the heroes of the 2025 sequel, Zootopia 2. The film’s premise is something of a libertarian nightmare. It is the story of a crony capitalist, Milton Lynxley, partnering with local government in the form of Mayor Brian Winddancer to extract favours for his business. Milton merely follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, Ebenezer Lynxley, who built his empire on lies and government corruption. The Lynxley family enjoys the respect, fame, and wealth that come with being the descendants of the inventor of Zootopia’s weather walls, an innovation that allows the city to be home to animals from every kind of environment: hot deserts, cold tundra, rainforests, and open meadows.
As we progress through the seemingly happy utopia that is Zootopia, we encounter the first signs of exclusion of a particular community: the reptiles. After a breathless chase through a water pipe and some heartbreaking disagreements between our cops, the lies Ebenezer Lynxley fabricated to advance his interests are finally laid bare. The weather walls, the single greatest innovation making Zootopia a utopia, are revealed to have been the original idea of Agnes De’Snake, a reptile. Agnes, an extraordinary innovator, had patented her idea and approached Lynxley seeking investment. Seeing the potential in her work, Ebenezer steals it and registers the patent in his own name. Later, he fabricates a murder to frame reptiles as dangerous and exiles them from the city using the force of the state. Eventually, Agnes’s lost patent is revived, and her name and innovation are restored to their rightful place in history.
What should catch the viewer’s attention here is a clear case of individuals seeking benefits and expanding their wealth by lobbying political actors, also known as “rent-seeking”. The Lynxleys used government power to suppress genuine innovators who arrived at their ideas through independent thought.
But how did Ebenezer manage to patent an idea that was already registered? The answer lies not in the failure of government enforcement, but rather in the very fact of government enforcement itself. Government involvement in the administration of patents has a well-documented tendency to create monopolies for connected businesses while shutting out those who threaten established lobbying interests. This erects entry barriers for smaller innovators and exposes them to litigation risks from larger firms operating under state protection.
This discussion would be incomplete without the case of Galgotias University, which filed and received an Indian patent for an “IoT-Based Writing Pen for Monitoring the Health Parameters” in 2024. In a manner that echoes Zootopia 2, an almost identical patent was filed by Samsung five years prior, in 2018 (see here). No legal action was taken or even considered necessary because patent filings by universities do not serve the purpose of eventual commercialisation. They serve a very different, and far more conflicting, set of incentives.
The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), which ranks universities across several categories, including “Research and Professional Practice” (see here). This parameter carries a 30% weight in the overall score, with the volume of patents filed as a sub-metric. This induces a mindless race to file patents purely to accumulate points and improve rankings, regardless of the quality of those filings or their resemblance to prior work. The formula rewards patents published, not granted, and certainly not commercialised. They do not need a working invention. They just need paperwork.
Since 2011, Galgotias University has filed 2,297 patent applications, surpassing the combined totals of IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, and IIT Kanpur. Only 24 of those applications were accepted, a success rate of roughly one per cent, as opposite to a success rate of sixty-three per cent in IITs. Once the ranking points are collected, none of the patents reaches the market. Data from the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) for 2026 shows that commercially worked patents fell to just 1.6% of all patents in force. A patent is considered commercially worked when the invention is actually manufactured, sold, or licensed in India, i.e., it has progressed from being a registered idea to being utilised in the market. A policy designed to advance innovation, therefore, not only fails to encourage it but actively distorts it. Educational institutions succumb to treating patents as a quota to fulfil rather than a natural product of genuine inquiry.
Some argue that even low-quality engagement with patents builds awareness and culture, and that imperfect participation is better than none. But consider the practical consequences. Patent examiners already work under government-imposed monthly targets of 15 new examination reports and 25 disposals. A flood of applications filed purely for ranking purposes lands on those same desks, deepening backlogs and squeezing the time available to scrutinise each case properly (see here). Quality control degrades under a volume that the government’s own incentive structure created. Teaching institutions that file without any commercial intention do not build an innovation culture. They teach that the appearance of innovation is what matters.
The most striking illustration of this is the moment Galgotias University announced on national television that the robot dog showcased at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi had been developed in-house. Within hours, internet users identified it as the Unitree Go2, a commercially available Chinese product retailing for approximately $2,200. The patent, it turns out, was not the only thing that had been borrowed.