The Hindu Business Line : A deluge of patent applications, but only 400 cleared

Long road ahead
80,574 applications have been filed with the patent office between January 2005 and November 30, 2007
Till 2005 only 6,857 patents were in force in India
Most approvals in the new regime are in areas of pharmaceutical products and agrochemicals

Ambarish Mukherjee

New Delhi, Dec. 6 With the introduction of the new patent regime in India in January 2005, a huge number of patent applications have come in.

As many as 80,574 applications have been filed with the patent office under the Ministry of Commerce and Industries between January 2005 and November 30, 2007 in all spheres of technology, departmental officials told Business Line.

These include applications for both product patents and process patents, officials said.

Contrasting with this huge number of applications is the fact that till 2005, only 6,857 patents were in force in India. Also, this number is way below 1,82,385 patents that were in force in China in the comparable period.

However, there is a flip side to it. Though the number of applications received has been encouraging, the grant of approvals has been slow.

Since the new regime came into force, only around 400 new patents have been approved, most of these being in the areas of pharmaceutical products and agrochemicals.

Officials further pointed out that the new approvals include Mail Box applications filed between 1995 to December 2004, which had been opened post January 2005.

Under the World Trade Organisation regime, India had to have a “mailbox” facility, where patent applications were to be filed till the Indian Patents Act 1970 was reviewed and a new regime allowing for both process and product patenting was in place.

In order to speed up the approval process, the Government has initiated several steps that include setting up of four new integrated offices in the four metros, starting the preliminary works for setting up of the National Institute of Intellectual Property Management in Nagpur and introduction of e-filing of patent applications with effect from July 2007.