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Saturday, August 21, 2010

79K patents are pending with Indian Govt.

In an information revealed in the Parliament, there are about 79,000 applications seeking grant of patents pending in front of the government. Out of this, nearly a third of the applications are from mechanical engineering and chemicals segment.
To deal with this humongous number of patent requests, the government has created 200 posts for examining the applications.
Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma in his written reply to the Lok Sabha regarding the patent requests said, "As on 30th June, 78,792 patent applications are pending with the Indian Patent Office." He added that the reason for the steep number of requests pending is because there was a considerable amount of increase in the number of patent applications filed with the office after 2003-04.
"In order to dispose of the pending requests for examination, the government has created 200 new posts of Examiners of patents and designs", said Sharma.

Reader Comment :-
Here is an interesting article on Patents in India and China.
Patents : India Vs. China, Local vs. MNCs – and spineless Indian IT Companies(ritten by sinha on June 23, 2008. Topic : Indian IT industry,Plugged .In):
Here is a snapshot of Indian patent story:
In 2007, the total number of patents granted increased by 8X (since 2006) and stands at 15,262. 35,000 (21% growth) patents that were filled in 2007.
Comparison with China (third most prolific patent-filing country in the world after the United States and Japan) throws a different perspective:
· The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) received a total of 245,161 20-year patent applications in 2007 .
· SIPO received approximately the same number of 20-year applications in 1997 as the IPO (i.e. Indian Patent Office) did in 2007-08. So, as far as stats are concerned, India is approximately 10 years behind China.
Ratio of domestic to foreign filing
· In 2007, filings by domestic applicants in China accounted for 62.4 percent, the y-on-y increase in domestic 20-year patent application filing in the country was 25 %, whereas that of foreign filings was only 4.5 percent.
· In India, foreign applicants filed 80 % of the patents, and the corresponding growth in domestic application filing was only 20 percent during the same period.
SpineLessness
· No IT/ITES companies, including TCS and Infosys (with only 35 and 29 published applications respectively), feature in the Top 200 list of filers with the IPO.
· Six domestic pharmaceutical and biotech companies – Ranbaxy, Dr. Reddy’s Labs, Orchid Pharmaceuticals, Cadila Healthcare, Cipla and Sun Pharmaceuticals – appear in the Top 100 list and another three – Aurobindo Pharmaceuticals, Torrent Pharmaceuticals and Matrix Labs – appear in the next 100 list of filers with the IPO.
Evalueserve’s study suggests changes to the existing patent application process, and allow a second category of patents, known as utility model patents, which have a validity of 10 years from their filing date and which can be granted within 6 to 12 months since they are not examined substantively.
The patent growth in China is also attributed to the lower cost of patent application – the filing fee for 10-year patents is only US $70!.
What’s really concerning about dismal patent numbers in India is the lack of interest in IT sector – which is supposed to be knowledge sector (isn’t Bangalore, world’s # 2 tech hotspot?)
Do Indian IT companies give a damn to IP? I believe, it’s just a lip service (and is handled by PR and not R&D dept.) and nothing beyond that.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP)

SOURCE - http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/79K_pending_patent_applications_for_Govt-nid-70300.html?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Subscriber

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