Comments
To speed up the process of granting patents in India, the government has set a target of slashing the time taken for first examination of patents to 18 months by March next year, from about 48 months at present, Commerce & Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
This will in turn bring down the time required for grant of patents to about two-and-a-half years under the ordinary route from five-seven years required at present, an official in the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) explained.
With a fresh batch of 400 patent examiners completing their training earlier this year and starting work, the time taken for examination of patent applications by the Indian patents office has already come down sharply to about one month this year compared to about thirteen months last year, the Minister pointed out speaking at the World Intellectual Property Day celebrations organised by CII on Thursday.
More manpower“By augmenting manpower, we are speeding up on clearing pending applications and are also catching up with the world standard in terms of waiting time,” Sitharaman said.
The patent office is now clearing about 4,000 applications a month, which is less than the number of new applications that are filed, pointed out OP Gupta, Controller General of Patents, Trademarks and Designs.
“By next year, there would be a considerable reduction in the pending patent applications,” Gupta said. About 2.5 lakh patent applications are pending with the patents office at various stages of disposal.
The Minister said that the DIPP was taking steps towards educating the police and enforcement agencies on patents as level of awareness amongst police was critical in delivering justice when patent rights get violated.
“Police officers in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have already started receiving training. We want to spread it to other States,” Sitharaman said.
The Minister reiterated that the country’s patent laws were totally compliant with international patent regulation, TRIPS, and it did not owe any explanation to any country. India’s patent laws have been repeatedly questioned by the US and also the EU countries which say that they are lax and do not give enough protection to patent holders.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.