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