Prashant raised very pertinent point in response to my last post on “patent competence” stating that: “As is obvious from the procedural and evidentiary mistakes that are happening before the Patent Office, the law component of the Patent Agent Examination is completely inadequate. A simpler option, in my opinion, would be to include some compulsory legal subjects as a part of the qualifying examination to become a patent agent. For e.g. the Law of Evidence, Statutory Interpretation, constitutional law, legal […]

We’ve had some very provocative posts on the qualifications necessary for patent practice in India. While some thought that a science/technical degree was an absolute must, others disagreed. A lot of these different view points hinged on the kind of patent practice that one was speaking about: patent drafting/prosecution vs patent litigation/advisory. Most appeared to agree that for patent drafting and prosecution, a science/technical degree was a must. However, here again, an issue was raised: can a software engineer draft