Appropriate due diligence mandatory before filing patents:Govt

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has asked its laboratories to file patents with proper techno-commercial evaluation and utmost due diligence owing to high costs, the government said today.
In a written response to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary said appropriate due diligence for techno-commercial evaluation has now been made mandatory.
The CSIR, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, is a premiere research body with nearly 38 laboratories under its wing that work on diverse topics.
"In order to align the Intellectual Property strategy of CSIR with the priorities of socio-economic development, including escalating costs of patent filings, this message was sent to exercise utmost due diligence in filing of patents.

"The filing of patents do follow a process of evaluation at various stages, which has been followed in all cases of patent filing. Appropriate due diligence for techno-commercial evaluation has now been made mandatory in filing of patents of CSIR," Chowdary said.
In a similar question asked in the Rajya Sabha in December last year, Chowdary had said CSIR had bagged 13,365 patents in the last three financial years and over 13 per cent of the body's total number of patents were put to commercial use as compared to the global average of 3 to 4 per cent.
It also spent over Rs 50 crore on its maintenance over the last three years.