Patent professionals and researchers would know the pain of correctly identifying the final granted claims for an invention. Previously, one had to examine the written submissions and the amendments made by the applicant, along with the controller’s order, to identify the final granted claims post-examination. One can only imagine how difficult the same exercise would be for someone unfamiliar with Patent Office procedures and patent law in general. To address this pain point and improve legibility of patent documents, the IPO has launched a new feature where, inside the View Documents tab in InPASS, which contains all the documents associated with a patent application, will now also contain a new document titled “Application Number_Granted_Patent_Specification.pdf” containing the final granted patent specifications post examination (as shown below).
Upon clicking it, one will gain access to a document containing the granted patent specifications, which includes the final complete specifications, along with the granted claims and accompanying drawings.
On a quick, random check of the prosecution history of granted patents this year. It appears that some granted patents offer the option to download the granted patent specifications in their View Documents tab (Patent Numbers: 577670, 577791), while others don’t (Patent Numbers: 577683, 577694, 577470).
Chary MLN, in a LinkedIn post, noted that he had provided feedback to the IPO, suggesting the incorporation of this feature. IPO, in turn, had responded via email that the feature would be introduced soon. Prof. Unnat P Pandit had further responded in the comments that this feature has been rolled out.
At this juncture, it’s somewhat unclear whether the feature has been incorporated into all patent applications granted to date or whether, moving forward from a specified date, all granted patents as part of their prosecution history will have a final granted patent specification. I presume that the feature is being gradually rolled out to all recently granted applications, which may explain the discrepancy of some having it and some not having it.
Irrespective of the minor issues, this is a welcome step from the IPO in increasing the legibility of patents and patent documents for all stakeholders and enhancing the public notice function of the patent register. Thanks to Chary MLN, the Indian Patent Office, and other stakeholders who made this possible.
On a final note, I was unable to find any public announcement or other official document from the IPO discussing this important and relevant change. I assume it will be announced soon, and perhaps more details will also then be unveiled too! If more informed readers have access to any such public announcement or public document, please share it in the comments.
