Guest Post: Overview & Comparison – Amendments in the Indian Patents Act

Nishidh Patel, a final year student at RGSOIPL, IIT Kharagpur who recently brought us two guest posts on counterfeits and India, now brings us a great infogram detailing the differences between the 1999, 2002 and 2005 amendments to the Indian Patents Act.

Overview & Comparison: Amendments in the Indian Patents Act – 1999, 2002 & 2005

A comparison of various amendments of any law gives us a chance to peep into the mind of the legislature which tries to achieve various objects for a variety of reasons over the period of time. In addition, it also reflects crucial changes in statutory provisions. Nonetheless, most of us would likely agree that preparing such an exhaustive comparison of amendments in any statute is a troublesome task and at the same time it is something which we would greatly appreciate.

Keeping this in mind, I decided to prepare a detailed overview & comparison of amendments in Indian patents act brought up in the year of 1999, 2002 and 2005. There are numerous important amendments which were brought into effect by The Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005 and The Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2005 which came into force from 1^st January, 2005. With the enactment of The Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005 the amending process of The Indian Patents Act, 1970 to bring it in line with the TRIPS Agreement had been completed. The earlier two amendments were enacted by the parliament in the years 1999 and 2002 respectively. It would be worthwhile to mention that I have hand-crafted this infographic to make it easier to get a quick & exhaustive overview of the said amendments. We look forward to valuable inputs from blog readers in the form of comments/suggestions. And now the infogram: