Patent Office opens up data of expired patents

Will sign bilateral agreement with European Patent Office for cooperation

The know-how and technological details of the patents, which has already been expired or lapsed validity in the country, is being opened up for the small and medium enterprises to utilise them for their business growth, said a higher official in the Indian Patent Office. India is also expected to sign a bilateral agreement with the European Patent Office (EPO) by September to have cooperation in various levels.

Participating in the inaugural function of 5th edition of IPEX 2014- conference on emerging trends in IP management and commercialisation, Chaitanya Prasad, controller general of patents, designs and trademarks, said that the patent office is offering the details of the expired patents through its website, free of cost.

He said that the knowledge of the expired patent, which becomes a public property, could be used by the small and medium level enterprises to develop new products. However, they cannot re-patent it.

Speaking about the proposed tie up with the EPO, expected to be signed in Geneva in the last week of September, he said that the agreement would be to develop biannual work plan to work on cooperation in various aspects including the training and data exchange of human resources and practices, along with other things,” he said.

In terms of standard practices, he said that the Patent Office wants to be at par with the best of the world practices by 2020 and at present, the patent examiners in India are almost twice faster than the examiners in US and European Patent Offices.

Around 43,000 applications are filed with the Patent Office every year. While majority of patent applications are filed by foreign firms, majority of trademark applications are from Indian applicants. Of the total patent applications, around 20 per cent are from Indian firms while in trademarks, the Office gets around 2.02 lakh applications a year, of which almost 90 per cent are from Indian applicants.

In order to improve the efficiency of patent filing mechanism, the Patent Office is planning to have all banks under its comprehensive payment gateway from early next week, which would be helpful for its applicants to pay online.