Centre steps in to expedite patent approvals

The government is taking measures to reduce the time to examine patent applications for clearing them at the earliest.

What's the target?

• Now the time is between 5 and 7 years for the first examination of patent applications. The target is to bring it down to 18 months, which is the benchmark in the U.S. for the first examination after the applications are filed.

What is being done to achieve this?

• To bring down the examination time, government will be setting a monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and an annual benchmark. In addition to the existing strength of 130 examiners of patents and designs, the government recently hired 458 new examiners. An additional 263 examiners will soon be recruited on a contract basis.
• Also, online examination has begun to reduce pendency. The government has already hired around 100 new examiners for trademarks. Examination time for trademarks has been reduced from 13 months to 8 months. And the new target is to bring this time down to one month by March 2017.

Present scenario:

• The pendency in patent applications and trademark registration as on February 1, 2016 was around 2.37 lakh and 5.44 lakh respectively. One of the main reasons for this situation was shortage of manpower.