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INDIA’s university rankings were meant to introduce competition, transparency and accountability into higher education. Instead, they may be creating a new pathology: institutions learning to optimise the numbers that determine their rank. The controversy over patent filings by some private universities is a revealing symptom of this larger problem. A patent application is not an innovation. It is merely a claim that an invention may deserve protection. It can subsequently be rejected, abandoned or remain commercially irrelevant. Yet when patent filings contribute to institutional rankings, the incentive is obvious: maximise applications and the score improves. The result can be a race to produce measurable activity rather than meaningful research. The problem extends beyond patents. Universities are increasingly judged by publication counts, citations, research projects, international collaborations and other quantifiable indicators.