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This is a report prepared on the basis of the Annual Report 07-08 provided by the Indian Patent office. This report provides us with an analysis of the patenting trends in the last five years (I.e From 2003-2008). The data for the analysis is taken from the Annual Report - 2007-08 provided by the Indian patent Office. This reports provides graphical representation of the trends followed in Indian patent office which gives us a better perspective of the progress made by the Indian Patent Office(IPO), the rise of patenting in various fields of inventions and major contributors to the patent filing trend in India.

Introduction

Indian Patent Office is functioning from its four branches located at Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai & Delhi. Kolkata Office is the Head Office. The Patent Office administers the law concerning protection of inventions in the country by way of grant of limited monopoly to the inventors or their assignees or legal successors. The Patents Act, 1970(as amended) governs the grant of patents.

Dolcera Analysis

1.1 Trends of patents in India:

The above trend was prepared based on the Annual report provided by the IPO. Go to IPO site to download the Annual report 2007-08

A.Patents Filed:

From the above graph one can easily find that there has been significant increase in the filing trend in the last five years. The number of applications for patents filed in 2007-2008 was 35,218 compared to 28,940 applications in 2006-2007 representing an increase of about 22 % in the filing. When one looks at the patents filing distribution in the year 2007-08, It’s a rather disappointing figure.

The above graph was taken from the IPO Annual Report 07-08.The number of applications for patents which originated in India were 6,040 contributing approximately 17% of the total number of applications filed during the year. The Major contribution comes from Maharashtra followed by Delhi, Tamilnadu and other states. Number of convention applications filed in 07-08 was 4453, Increased by about 41% over the 06-07 year’s total of 3165.

Majority of the foreign applications were filed through the PCT National Phase route. The number of such applications filed during the year 07-08 was 23,891 which was about 21% higher as compared with the previous year total of 19,768.The major contributor is USA followed by Germany, UK and other countries.

The Number of PCT applications have grown considerably in the last five years, the legal entity showing greater interest than the individuals.During the year 07-08 total filing was 707 as compared with 534 in the previous year, an increase of approximately 33%.Major contributors for the PCT international applications during the year were CSIR, Cadila Healthcare Ltd, Matrix Laboratories Ltd. Alembic Ltd., Jubilant Organizes, Starlight Optical echnologies Ltd. Pricol Ltd., Onmobile Global Ltd., Panacea Biotech Ltd., Reliance Life ciences Pvt. Ltd., Natco Pharma, hetero drugs Ltd., Ind- Swift Laboratories Ltd.

From all the above data it is eviden that the number of foreign patent applications is nearly 4 times that of the domestic patents filed in India. It also reflects that developed countries continue their interest in R&D activities and they ensure that their invention is protected in developing and a great consumer market like India.

B. Patents Examined:

The number of patents examined each year is not steady and has its ups and downs each year. One can easily observe that the number of patents examined fell in the years 05-06 and 07-08 as compared to the previous years.

This raises doubts on the conditions of the patent examinations in India. Its well known fact that there is a crunch of patent examiners in the IPO to examine the patents. Hence there is a need to recruit qualified patent examiners which will help remove the backlogs of the pending patent applications in India.

C. Patents Granted:

The number of patents granted has increased significantly in the last five years. The year 07-08 saw nearly double the patents granted as compared to the previous years.

1.2 Patents application and grant in various technology fields:

The above chart depicts which categories of patents are most sorted for application in India. As far as patent application is concerned Chemical, Mechanical and drugs patents have gained significantly in terms of their application in India while there is decline in patent applications related to Food, Electrical, Computer/Electronics and Biotechnology patents in the year 07-08. The major reason could be the recent recession period which had hit many sectors or it could be as a result of the Bilski case. The Others category which contains specialised field has seen a considerable rise in 07-08 ahead of other patent applications.

As far as grant of the patents goes the grant of the patents have increased considerably due to the efforts put by the IPO and due to amendments in Indian Patent ACT in 2002 and 2005 respectively which could be the reason for the increase in the grant of the patents in recent years.

The others field distribution is shown below. The IPO has classified it since these are specialised branches. The below analysis is for the others field distribution for the year 07-08

One can see that applications in the field of Physics, Communication and Biomedical contribute to 50% of the applications in the other specialised fields.

One can see that Biochemistry and Physics contribute to 50% of the patents granted in Others field, thus showing that new inventions are being made in these fields.

1.3 Conclusion:

Though significant steps are being taken by the Indian Government and the IPO to encourage patent application in India and improvement in the working of the IPO, we still are much behind then our neighbor China where the patent applications are said to have crossed US and Japan patent applications Source. What IPO needs is a better database where people can access patents easily similar to those patent database as USPTO and EPO, where patents documents can be easily downloaded and legal status of these documents can be accessed. Though Indian patent PDFs for application number 1-80000 are available but the patents after that are not available in full texts. Patents signify the Research activity in a nation. The number of domestic filings are very less and major applications are from foreign nationals which is a cause of concern since it shows that domestic R&D activities are not given enough boost. Hence steps should be taken to encourage original research activities which will help develop India and mankind

-Anil Sharma

Knowledge Scientist

Dolcera

© Dolcera 2009, All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication should be copied without the permission from the authour or from Dolcera.

Disclaimer: The above report has been prepared from the data provided in the Annual Report 07-08 by the IPO. There can be manual errors and the author or the company(Dolcera) takes no responsibility for the damage caused due to the data provided.

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