India Will Accede To Patent Treaty
India has decided to accede to the Paris Convention for the protection of Industrial Property and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and will extend reciprocal property arrangement to all countries party to the Convention.
Under the Patent Cooperation Treaty system, by the time an international application reaches an Indian patent office, it would have been searched by the international office thereby providing the office with necessary search report, on the basis of which it could carry out its examination.
The ultimate examination and grant of the patent would however be left entirely to the Indian patent office which will examine the application with the framework of domestic law.
A government release said India will not have to make any changes at all to its Patents Act of 1970 in order to accede to the Patent Cooperation Treaty. The only change required in the laws on industrial property is a minor amendment in Section 78 (a) of the Designs Act of 1911, to extend reciprocal property arrangement to all 147 countries party to the Paris Convention. At present, this is restricted to Commonwealth countries. China, for instance, is not a World Trade Organisation member but is a member of the Paris convention.
A government release on this said that the most important benefit for India from membership of the Paris convention is access to the Patent Cooperation Treaty. This is a special agreement under the convention for international cooperation in the field of patents. It deals with rationalisation and cooperation with regard to filing, searching and examination of patent applications and dissemination of information contained in them.
The principle objective of the PCT is to simplify and render more effective and economical the means of applying for patents in several countries. Before the introduction of the PCT, the only way in which protection could be sought in several countries was by filing a separate application in different countries. The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides for filing a single application, in one language having effect on each of the countries party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty as designated by the applicant, formal examination of the application, international search which gives a report on the previously published applications in the field of invention, centralised publication, options for an international preliminary examination before the applicant decides to seek protection on a specific country.
Further, it is expected that with accession to this treaty, India would be able to play a more significant role in the determination of matters related to industrial property in the international fora.