The Hindu Business Line : Patent offshoring sector to grow at 35%

Mumbai, July 3 The widespread impact of the US patent reform act of 2007 coupled with the multi-fold increase in patent applications globally will see the Indian patent offshoring industry clock $2.06 billion in revenues by 2012 end, at an annual growth rate of 35 per cent.

In order to fuel this growth momentum, the number of people employed in this industry here will grow to 6,950 in the next four years from 1,550 as on 2007-end, according to a report by Pune-based research firm Valuenotes Database. As on 2007-end, revenues for the Indian patent offshoring industry stood at $47 million.

The Patent Reform Act of 2007 has switched the US, which accounts for about 60 per cent of the work offshored to India, to a first-to-file patent system from a first-to-invent system, Ms Subha Kalathur, senior analyst with Valuenotes told Business Line. “Hence, early filing becomes more important than the date of the claimed invention for entitlement to patent rights. One of the ways to quicken the patent claims drafting process is to offshore its key components to destinations such as India”, she said.

Large corporations outsource chunks of their patent drafting process such as prior art search, patent illustration, patent proofreading and actual patent drafting in some cases. However, very few companies outsource services such as landscape reports and competitive intelligence reports as the patent services industry in India is still in its infancy.

Firms can save about 40 per cent in costs by offshoring to the 50-odd specialist companies in India.

Going forward, there will be a significant opportunity of taking on work from patent offices as well, as most of them are faced with a ballooning backlog due to high attrition among patent examiners. (Patent offices are country specific or intergovernmental organisations that control the issue of patents).

In the US patent office alone, there about 50,000 pending applications which could take three-five years to get examined. In 2007 alone more than 1.8 million patent applications were filed worldwide, the report said.

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