2013: Controller’s decisions at the IPO

2013, like the preceding years, reflects the major developments made at our patent office.  2013 saw the initiation of publishing and inviting comments on various issues like those on computer related inventions, and on examination of biotechnology applications.  Several drives were conducted to clear pending trademark applications and concerns.  One major development was that our patent office started functioning as an International Search Authority, and as an International Preliminary Examination Authority.  Besides initiating and managing these developments, the Controllers at our patent office also managed to deliver about 1800 decisions (approximate-post will be updated with exact numbers for December).  This post summarizes the various decisions issued by our controllers.

In 2013, by last count today, a total of 1695 decisions were issued. Out of these 62% were granted, and 34% were refused, and 4% had no file uploaded. The refused category includes applications abandoned by the applicants. This, in my view is an extremely positive development for our patent office as these numbers are similar to those of other patent offices (70-30).

Note: This data for this post was collected at different times and I was helped by Tanvir Verma, and Amith Krishnan, both students of Rajiv Gandhi School of Law, IIT KGP.  My thanks to them for the data collection.

COMPLETE LIST