The Government of India has recently made amendments to the Patents Rules which is a step towards India’s endeavour to develop a user-friendly Intellectual Property regime which would facilitate as well as encourage innovation.
Pursuant to the amendment to the Patents Act, 1970 as contained in the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has issued a Notification further amending the Patents Rules, 2003.
The Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2006, with a view to ensure time bound disposal of patent applications, has prescribed definitive time frames for various activities by the Patent Offices.
A patent application now has to be referred to an Examiner within one month of a request for its examination. Further, the Controller will now be required to take a decision on the report of the Examiner within one 1month of its submission and the First Examination Report has also to be issued within six months of the date of request for examination of a patent application. The time for granting permission to file patents abroad has also been reduced from 3 months to just 21 days.
Patent applications are now to be compulsorily published within one month after expiry of the statutory period of 18 months and, in case of request for an early publication, the application is to be published within one month from the date of request. This step will introduce an element of certainty regarding the date of publication, which was previously not available.
Further the timelines available for applicants and the public have also been extended. Accordingly the time frame for:
- Making a request for examination has been extended from 36 to 48 months.
- Filing a pre-grant opposition extended from 3 to 6 months.
- Filing reply to pre-grant opposition extended from 1 to 3 months.
- Meeting the requirements of the First Examination Report increased from 6 to 12 months.
Changes have also been made to make the patent rules user-friendly.
- The working of the Patent Offices has also been decentralized completely. All patent activities can now be carried on by all the patent offices (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata & Chennai). Earlier certain patent activities could be carried out only by the Head Office (Patent Office at Kolkata).
- Fees to the Patent Office can now be paid electronically.
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