Mint has newly launched a blog titled Vanishing Point which will focus “on intellectual property law to analyse issues that come up at the point where law converges with technology”. Srividhya Raghavan who is a Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law and is specializing in intellectual property and C.H Unnikrishnan, a national writer with Mint who has been consistently covering intellectual property news will be writing on the blog.The first piece on the blog titled “Fanning winds of change at the IP Office” brought out the influential role of the media in reforming the Intellectual Property Office. The national campaign for transparency was carried out by SpicyIP & Mint. The government appointed a civil servant as the Controller General for the first time. The piece notes the numerous reforms initiated by Mr. Kurian in the IPO after his appointment.
Reforms introduced by Mr. Kurian include the introduction of a fresh system of assigning patent examination to expert groups and revamping the online database of the IPO (Click here for a previous post on the reforms). In addition to this he has also struck down strongly on corruption at the patent office (Click here for a post on the same). The piece concludes by noting that these reforms should be accompanied by the grant of increased financial and operational autonomy to the IPO.
Image from here.
Dear Mr. Bashir,
I would like to ask one question regarding the so called transparency issue. How does the spicy ip define transparency, by not letting agents/attorneys interact with Examiners/Controllers. To let them do the work the way they want. to grant the files as they wish. what assurance can u give that the system is corruption free and is not modulated.Further i would like to ask, name a country were patent is granted without any meeting with examiner and if so is the case i think Patent agents are not required any more. In present scenario a paralegal is sufficient to handle IP matters. Tifac should stop giving training for IPR
Dear Anon,
Firstly, I’m not sure there is a blanket bar on meeting examiners. If you require to discuss the issue with them, I’m pretty certain that you can seek an “official” appointment and meet them. However, what the Controller seems to be worried about is the “free for all” office culture where anyone could walk in and out and speak to IPO officers (and in the process “influece”). Needless to state, this contributed significantly to the corruption culture. And to this extent, identity cards and regulated meetings, I think are useful policy reforms to tackle an ongoing evil at the IPO.
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Dear Mr. Basheer,
Thank you for the reply. The cards issued by the Patent Office are nothing more then showpieces. I agree that “free for all” culture was the main culprit but sir still there are discrepancies which need to be worked out.On one hand Patent Office issues letter that your xyz application has been taken up for examination while IPIRS on the IPO website reflects the status as withdrawn. NO doubt IPIRS is result of Mint and spicy ip and we really appreciate this.
Good point of IP office…
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