Indian Patent Office
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The Indian Patent Office is administrated by the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks (CGPDTM), located in Mumbai, India. This is a subordinate office of the Indian government that administers Intellectual Property (IP) laws.
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[edit] Patent administration
The CGPDTM has five main administrative sections:
- Patents
- Designs
- Trade Marks
- Geographical Indications
- Patent Information System
The patent office is headquartered at Kolkata with branches at Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai. The trade marks registry is located in Mumbai, and has branches in Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad and New Delhi. The design office is located at Kolkata, while the office of the Patent Information System is in Nagpur.
The Controller General, who supervises the working of the Patents Act, the Designs Act, and the Trade Mark's Act, also render advice to the Government on matters relating to these subjects. Under the CGPDTMA, a Geographical Indications Registry has been established in Chennai to administer the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.
The Indian patent office has approximately 135 Examiners, 50 Assistant Controllers, 5 Deputy Controllers, 1 Joint Controller, and 1 Senior Joint Controller, who operate from four branches. Although the designations of the controllers differ, all of them (with the exception of the Controller General) have equal authority in administering the Patents Act. In 2005, the Indian Patent Office examined around 14,500 patent applications. [1]
[edit] History
- 1856: The act VI of 1856 on protection of inventions based on the British patent law of 1852. Certain exclusive privileges granted to inventors of new manufacturers for a period of 14 years.
- 1859: The act modified as Act XV; patent monopolies called exclusive privileges (making, selling and using inventions in India and authorizing others to do so for 14 years from date of filing specification)
- 1872: The patterns & designs protection act
- 1883: The protection of inventions act
- 1888: Consolidated as the inventions & designs act
- 1911: The Indian patents & designs act
- 1972: The patents act (act 39 of 1970) came into force on 20th April 1972
- 1975: India joins WIPO
- 1995: The Indian government became a signatory to TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) after it joined the WTO in 1995
- 1999: On March 26, Patents (Amendment) Act, (1999) came into force from 1 January 1995
- 2002: The Patents (Amendment) Act 2002 came into force from 20th May 2003.The concepts of 20 year patent term, 18 months publication, request for examination, inventive step for Patent-ability were introduced by this amendment
- 2005: Patents Act 1970 as amended by The Patents (Amendment) Ordinance 2004 & The Patent Rules 2003 as amended by the The Patent Amendment Rules, 2005 come into force
[edit] Amendments to the Patents Act
The amendments (in 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006) were necessitated by India's obligations under TRIPS, allowing product patents in drugs and chemicals. Another important feature was the introduction of pre-grant representation (opposition) in addition to the existing post-grant opposition mechanism. The pre-grant representation has had success in this short span. One example is the abandoning of a patent application of Novartis on Gleevec (Imatinib Mesylate), revoking the earlier granted EMR on the same drug used to treat Leukemia.[citation needed]
A controversial provision of this amendment was on software patent-ability, which was later withdrawn in another amendment (The Patents Act, 1970, as amended by the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005). The Patent Rules 2003 was amended in 2005 and again in 2006. Some of the important features of both the 2005 & 2006 rules are the introduction of reduced time lines and a fee structure based on specification size and number of claims, in addition to the basic fee.
Further amendment to the Patents Act is expected in view of a committee setup by Government of India to look into:
- Whether India would still be deemed to comply with TRIPs if it limited the grant of patents for pharmaceutical substances to new chemical entities or to new medical entities involving one or more inventive steps
- Whether it would be TRIPs-compatible to exclude micro-organisms from patenting.
