Spicy Tidbits: FICCI Working Group on Indian Patent Office

Within a short time, this Consultative Working Group has already achieved the following:

1. A separate wing has been established in the Mumbai Patent Office which is solely responsible for data analysis (such as records on technical fields by year of filings, maximum no. of patents granted to a company in each sector, top 20 companies filing patents, total no. of patents granted in each year, resident filings, non-resident filings, pending applications by office, patents in force by country etc.) and converting it in statistical format. This will help in judging the patenting trends in each sector.

2. The Patent Office has made the abstracts of patent applications, published after 18 months, online. This eliminates the hurdles associated with searching the desired information through Patent Office Journals, published in PDF format.

3. Opposition decisions are now made available online. Sandeep Rathod of Generic Pharma and Varun Chhonkar of Patent Circle had blogged on this aspect here and here.

4. Some of the records of granted patents (old) have been made available online and others are in progress.

5. E-filing of patent and trade Mark applications have been made more user friendly by increasing number of payment gateways and certifying authorities for digital signatures.

Sheetal Chopra, Senior Assistant Director – FICCI-IPR Division informs SpicyIP that FICCI is very open to the idea of suggestions from the various IP stakeholders and members of the public . So if you have any comments in terms of improving the Indian patent office and making it more user friendly etc, we urge you to write in with your suggestions to [email protected] .

SpicyIP welcomes this FICCI initiative and openness to public comments. Such inclusiveness will go a long way towards encouraging transparency in our IP policies and institutions. @ficci.com>