The Patent Office has announced the results of the Patent Agent examination today. The results are available on the website of the Patent Office over here. Individual lists for each city have also been released – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkotta.
The overall pass percentage for the exam is down to, roughly 18,% a substantial decline from the previous years. The decline in the pass percentage is, most likely, reflective of a much more rigorous examination process initiated by the Patent Office.
Our hearty congratulations to those who have cleared the exam!
Rather than directly attributing the lower pass percentage to higher standards, I would say that the number of people who have appeared must be the real denominator.
This year, I saw a very large nuumber of ‘complete’ absentees [absent for all 3 sections] and even a few section absentees.
Regards,
Freq. Anon.
18% of candidates who applied passed
22% of people who appeared passed
This is much higher that what used to be few years back. Few years back pass percent was in single digits.
I know some who wrote the exam were not satisfied with the evaluation. Even a look into the marks reveals discrepancy. Some candidates doing good in the written and not being given the same in viva, others doing extremely good in Viva but not getting through in other papers.
Have heard one of the panel members was really harsh (with questions and maybe even marks)on candidates from competitors firm. Marking must not be a matter of personal preference.
Also the question paper seemed to have some uncertainty of answers. In a case situation, there may not always be a single solution. Was different options given consideration? or the evaluators were made to stick to a key which may not be considered as correct option by others?
Shamnad was a part of the committee. Would request him to press for publishing the answer key and evaluation process and to inject more transparency into this exam process. Especially into the process of evaluation of Viva
I personally think the viva is really unnecessary and brings in a great deal of subjectivity! It should go–and we need to push for a change to the rule that mandates such vivas!
I think Patently Yours has raised some very valid questions. But all said and done, the Patent Agent exam was conducted in a very systematic manner this time, atleast compared to the previous years. There was a time when the examination used to be held at the premises of certain law firms because the Patent Office did not have a venue to hold the exam! During those years, every employee of those firms was encouraged to appear for the exam and not surprisingly the number of successful candidates from those law firms went up in those years…. Comparatively this year, the exam was held much more transparently.
However, a few more steps could have been taken. The PA exam is a qualifying examination, not a competitive examination, which means it decides the ability of a person to practice his profession “legitimately”. This requires the process to be held with greater transparency with no room for doubt about its integrity. This time there is credible information that a few question banks were prepared by certain law firms and this is not the first time this has happened. If an exam board has been constituted for the purpose of setting the paper, where was the need to ask firms to step into the picture? Not just that, certain members on the exam board are practitioners before the patent office. Whatever their personal reputation and credentials, barring academics, these practitioners should not have been part of the examination process at any stage, this applies all the more to Viva. After all, when so much of effort has gone into the examination by those involved in conducting it, they could have ensured that there was no room for alleging conflict of interest. When there is a real possibility of clash of professional egos, this could be have been avoided.
And finally, the Viva should probably be taken up as a sociological case study. How is it that gender identity has influenced the Viva so brazenly? The average Viva scores for the fairer sex borders on the 80 with quite a few scoring above 90…let’s have a few female members on the Viva board to give male candidates a fair chance as well… 😉
SpicyIP ka Shubhchintak
Hi,
Iam Anitha appeared for the exam.
I scored 90 in viva; 61 in paper-I but scored 47 in paper II.
Is there any revaluaton proceedure.
I feel that the paper pattern was extremely good. Candidates were forced to apply their brain and logic. The good marks in written paper indicates their understanding of the subject. But i have also seen that in many of the cases viva marks did not match to the level of theory marks. Candidates were asked just 2 or 3 questions and on that basis their knowledge was judged. Even on giving 2 out of 3 answers correct they were given just 20 or 30 marks. What should this be considered as – personal rivalry or unlikeness? Judging people’s intellect on the basis of 2 questions is not at all right. Something should be done to change this system. In fact viva’s of proper 30 mins should be conducted only for the students who qualify in the written exam.
@ Anitha : Sorry about your results. There is RTI Act (Right To Information), you can obtain copy of your marked answer sheet and check it. See the IPO website which lists the Information officer would be.
Unfortunately I dont think there is any revaluation, but if there was an obvious mistake on face of it I am sure that there must be way to correct it.
Again, since both the papers (more so in Paper II) are subjective to interpretation, it is hard to determine what was the correct answer why such marks were allotted without access to the key used to mark the paper. This makes things more harder and less transparent.
@ Sai Deepak : CG has sure brought in a sea of changes in way exams are administered, for the past two years the marks are being published, that brings a lot of transparency into the results. But a lot more needs to be done.
But when talking about practitioners, we must be thankful for some good ones. I heard about one of the law firms who were approached to represent on the Viva panel, but refused since they felt it inappropriate specially that some of its employees were appearing. That was a commendable decision, but unfortunately there are not many who could resist such an offer.
The first thing the panel asks is about where one worked, including job profile, the name of the firm and number of years working, which would more or less decide the fate of you next 10-20 minutes (including the time you will be grilled).
Well about the case study, it would sure make an interesting study. But then again the fairer sex always have a fair chance.
Another interesting topic to study would be how the Phd’s performed in the Viva. A random glance on viva marks of last year would prove my point.
All said and done, the ones who passed, deserved to pass,and all credit goes to them for the hard work, but that does not mean the all the ones who failed deserved to.
I fully agree with Sai’s view in this regard.I have a question to ask IPO, the question being, Is there no competent persons in IPO to successfully conduct these PA exam without taking help from outside like law firms, IP professionals, who are very much a interested party, and avoid such “conflict of interest” kind of situation?
Dear Patently Yours,
I was just posting a comment on behalf of a reader and a well-wisher of the blog who wishes to remain anonymous. Please note the comment wasn’t signed by me. But that said I have my own views on the issue, which to a large extent resonate with Shubhchintak’s on certain points raised by him. That still doesn’t stop me from agreeing with you.
You are absolutely right, it isn’t fair to point fingers at renowned practitioners who have taken time out of their hectic schedules to assist the Patent Office. Nor is it right to paint all practitioners or firms with the same brush. I think what Shubhchintak is broadly trying to say is that when allegations of conflict of interest can be avoided, they might as well and must be avoided, and to that extent I don’t see anything wrong with Shubhchintak’s views. We should also probably take a look at Section 159(2)(xiv) along with Section 126(1)(c)(ii) read with Rule 110 to understand the scope of powers vested in the Patent Office with regard to conduct of examination.
It is true that the current CG is one of the best things to have happened to Indian IP because I heard him talk on world IP day in the event held by AAPA in Delhi and the sheer enthusiasm with which he presented his plans for the Patent Office is laudable. The fact that he has plans to induct 257 additional Patent examiners, some of who are from CSIR, only goes on to show the seriousness with which he has taken up his current assignment. The e-filing system which is in the pipeline is another brilliant initiative to bring in paperless governance.
That said, there’s always scope for improvement and merely because some of us take it upon ourselves to point it out consistently, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are consciously trying to be party poopers who never have a good word to say about the Patent Office. We want the Patent Office to succeed in all its well-planned initiatives and we are just ‘doing our bit’, to use an abused phrase, to help the Patent Office by providing it with constructive criticism. After all, the Patent Office has to attend to the disposal of its day-to-day affairs and it is for the rest of us to provide it with useful inputs wherever and whenever possible.
Take for instance a notification released sometime back on submission of sequence listing for biotech applications. It was stipulated that the listing must be provided in hard copies; we know that sequence listing sometimes runs into several thousand pages, which means for every additional page beyond the specified limit, the applicant has to shell out a significant sum for each application. If paperless governance is in the pipeline, then applicants might as well submit soft copies of such sequence listings. When the Patent Office already has huge issues with docketing and maintaining files, would it not be helpful to file soft copies? Is it unfair to point this out?
As for the fairness of the examination results, I think it’s human tendency to look for faults outside us than within us, when things don’t go as planned. So, one shouldn’t read too much into any views expressed about distribution of marks between male and female candidates. These days women perform better in so many competitive examinations, why should the PA exam be any different? In fact, this time the two toppers in the exam are female candidates and their marks are proportionately distributed. I think it would be sexist to say that the fairer sex was favoured by examiners.
Also, it’s juvenile if someone were to assail either the quality of the paper or to say that a few candidates were specifically targeted. The matured way of dealing with the situation is to accept the result gracefully, seriously learn from the mistakes made and be better prepared the next time around. For this to happen, I think it would be a fair request by candidates to be given access to the answer key and probably copies of their answer sheets as well, subject to payment of fees of course.
Best Regards,
Sai.
As this is a qualifying & not a competitive exam, there must a periodic ‘re-qualifying’ by all those who are now Patent Agents.
I have heard some of them remark that if they had appeared this time, they would not have qualified – goes to show their memory on the subject.
Viva should be only for those who have cleared the written exam & of a standard format. The practise of expecting candidates to mug up Section/Rule/Provision No.’s should be dispensed, as even the current qualified person’s always cross-checks in Ref. books. Rather it should be a test of their responses to various real-life sitautions that a PA will face.
Claim drafting has been added for the first time in the second paper, for which the patent office is to be congratulated. However, it is debatable how the quality of claim drafting has been evaluated. For example, the independent claims are the heart of a patent and must be as broad as allowed by the prior art, must exclude pitfalls in language leading to ambiguity, and so on. I wonder if the examiners at the patent office themselves go through the exercise of drafting claims given a concept and prior art. Their job involves raising objections to other people’s claims all the time!
Following the thread of comments for the blog posted, the discussion has been mainly focused on the viva.
My personal feeling is along with the previous question papers that the Patent Office puts on its website, if a suggestive answer to the papers and/or schema for evaluation is put, then candidates can prepare towards writing answers in accordance with the suggestive answers and/or schema. Such a procedure will also remove the prevailing concern regarding failure to qualify in the first two papers
The thread of comments on the blog of Results of Patent Agent Examination has been focusing on the examination pattern and procedure, moreso conduction of viva. While the viva is highly subjective and not all candidates do get assessed for the said 10-20mins, my comment is more on the steps needed from the Patent Office to make the process of selection of Patent Agents more transparent.
Patent Office has put up previous years question paper as a reference for candidates to prepare for the examination. When a new pattern was introduced during 2010 examination, it would have been useful if a model paper based on the new pattern along with suggestive answer and/or schema of evaluation was also posted. I feel adopting this step would put Patent Office on a better stand on the outcome of results.
One possible way to get rid of the bias introduced by the viva is by having an objective exam. An objective exam is used to determine whether a candidate knows enough about the process. As an example, the USPTO patent bar exam is 100% objective, open book, multiple choice question exam. One has access to the entire MPEP electronically or physically depending upon format chosen.
Compare this with the Indian bar exam where not only there are two exams but also a viva added on.
There is a great disparity between the viva marks in each of the centers. This year the Mumbai center gave the lowest marks in the viva.
The job of PA is to interact with the patent office on a regular basis and this interaction must be tested rather than the examiner introducing irrelevant extraneous questions in the viva.
This year the paper was very well drafted as compared to previous years. There were very few questions relating to fees and forms and more questions on ‘substantive understanding’ of the practice before the IPO. Hopefully this trend can continue.
It has now been well observed that this year teh Patent Agent exam was a tough job. I agree with other viewers. There may be various possibilities to draft a specification and to write claims. Also, there may be various poosible solutions for the suggestive questions asked in Paper-I and II. It would be of great help if the Indian Patent office may provide desciptive comments with detailed solutions to the written paper both Paper-I and II.
The Patent office must be congratulated for preparing such strict examination. But I think students should be judged by the knowledge which they know, not by the knowldge which they don’t know.
I would like to request the IP experts to provide solutions of the question paper that may help the students to understand their mistakes and improve further.
There is one more aspect of discrepancy which I think, it should be considered seriously. The results displayed on websites indicates a huge discrimination among the students appeared from Kolkata centre. Only 5 passed out of 70. Are the students not capable enough to enter the IP field. Comparatively, the students of other centres have scored well in theory as well as viva. This matter needs to be discussed.
Guess is quite late to comment on this topic but still better late than never .. Well the viva issue has been widely debated as I see in the comment thread .. but I doubt anyone prominently focussed that the majority failures is because of flunking in Paper II .. since PA is not a competitive exam with elimination as not its primary concern I personally feel that Paper II has some serious technical problems that need to be brought to notice ..
1. The paper is very subjective and low scoring pressing the death nail on candidates who has otherwise scored excellently
2. Its awfully lengthy as most would agree as even the IPO as they extended the exam time this year
3. A major focus of the paper is in Drafting patents in which one good draft is enough to consume your whole exam time although the IPO differs by saying they are just satisfied with the structure
4. This time they had given two drafts technically ( although most would differ but I presume even writing a good Abstract of an invention takes quite some time)
5. Case studies adding to the pain with time management in such paper as individual cases require elaborate explaining in order to comprise a better answer
6. The paper is very relative where everybody may have different ways of answering which cannot be evaluated as one is right and the other is completely wrong where in the IPO finally sets the law of the land ousting all other views
Well this is all I could remember an jot down. Further is there any set rules of evaluation or it changes every year. Last year everybody who scored 45+ but < than 50 were given a grace which pulled many through but is not given this year. Lastly to conclude this comment should not be held to be criticizing IPO but a request to get more structured and transparent in order to avoid all such debates
Patenting is an art, it requires a good and thorough practice just like people do in CA or Law, they need to work with those who have some experience in this art of patenting as well as IP port folio. This sort of examination does not yield anything nor we get the required people, those who have attitude or aptitude that leads to high level of IQ, without which we may be making wrong moves. It just become like digging a mountain for catching a rat.
To mu knowledge this art of IP requires enormous IQ as one has to make creative moves to protect creativeness as well as inventions. That is an interdisciplinary type of work.