Indian Patent Office - Patent Administration

Patent Administration

The CGPDTM reports to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion(DIPP) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and has five main administrative sections:

• Patents
• Designs
• Trade Marks
• Geographical indications
• Patent Information System

The patent office is headquartered at Kolkata with branches in Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai, but the office of the CGPDTM is in Mumbai. The office of the Patent Information System is at Nagpur.

The Controller General, who supervises the administration of the Patents Act, the Designs Act, and the Trade Mark's Act, also advises the Government on matters relating to these subjects. Mr. P.H.Kurian was the first IAS officer to serve as Controller General. Mr Chaitanaya Prasad has assumed charge as CGPDTM recently.Under the office of CGPDTM, a Geographical Indications Registry has been established in Chennai to administer the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.

The Indian Patent Office has 75 Patent Examiners, 70 Assistant Controllers, 7 Deputy Controllers, 1 Joint Controller, and 1 Senior Joint Controller, all of whom operate from four branches. Although the designations of the Controllers differ, all of them (with the exception of the Controller General) have equal authority in administering the Patents Act.

The controversial promotion of many Examiners as Assistant Controllers has further led to an imbalance in the set-up of the Patent Office, thereby disrupting the normal functioning of the organization. There are now more supervisors (Controllers) than workers (Examiners)..

An Indian Patent Examiner is mandated to search for prior art and for objections under any other ground as provided in the Patent's Act, then to report to the Controller, who has the power to either accept or reject Examiners' reports. Unlike the system at the USPTO /EPO/JPO, Examiners at IPO have only recommending power and the controllers are empowered by statute either to accept or refuse their recommendations.(Sections 12 -15 of the Patent's Act, page 100,Item 8.04.10 of Patent office manual). This means that only Controllers have the power to grant or refuse patents in India. Examiners' reports to the Controller are not open to the public unless courts allow it (section 144 of the Patents Act). A Parliamentary committee has recommended repealing S144 .

Examiner attrition seems to be issue with the Office. Despite the attrition the number of first office actions have increased from 2004-05 probably due to increased output from the Office. Ex-Controller General, Mr. P.H.Kurian, in an interview, had promised time-bound promotions to Officers and recruitment of new Examiners. This may mitigate the crisis of lack of officers and the problem of attrition due to low pay and lack of promotion, if implemented. There are around 75 examiners who have been languishing in the same post without promotion for over 8 years from 2003 onwards. Many highly qualified (some of them have international reputation for their research and academic attainments) examiners have left the Indian Patent Office as the IPO could not provide a good work environment. Corruption, nepotism and bribery within all level of staffs and officers in the Indian Patent Office (particularly Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata) and the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Government of India are prevalent. A very strong coterie-driven politics persists within the atmosphere of the Patent Office.

However the promise related to promotion made by the former CGPDTM was not kept and is leading to a bigger crisis of mass attrition by newly recruited examiners (recruitment based on only an examination, the candidates were never interviewed by neither the Patent Office nor CSIR) who were recruited by the HR wing of CSIR after spending huge amounts of exchequer's money. CSIR charged 4-5 Crores INR for conducting the selection examination. Out of the announced 257 posts only less than 135 selected candidates have expressed interest to join. Among those who joined, many have already submitted their resignations and still more are waiting in the wings to resign soon. This is an indication of the deep malaise within the system which is being ignored or covered up silently.

The crisis of attrition is becoming more severe day by day as more examiners are leaving the organization. The management is quietly covering it up by increasing the work load of remaining officers. At present, monthly target for examiners are 15 new cases(FERs) and 25 disposals(including further examination reports). This has led to officers working under tremendous pressure to show output thereby affecting the quality of grant of patents. The recent case of revocation of a granted patent under section 66. being a good example of such pressure.

A recent report of a concerned government official has recommended outsourcing of search in view of increased work load. IPO has started to outsource prior-art searches violating the stipulations of the prevailing Patents Act . However, because of quality and legal issues with outsourcing, prior art searching is done in house only and outsourcing contracts have now been cancelled.

According to Indian newspaper Mint, Indian patent examiners have the world's highest workload and lowest pay (Rs 46000 p.m entry level pay for a fresher as on 14/6/2012) . While a patent examiner in the European Patent Office would handle less than seven patent applications per month and a USPTO examiner would handle eight applications per month, an Indian examiner reportedly handles at least 40 applications a month. However an Indian examiner’s monthly salary is less than a third of his/her counterparts in other foreign patent offices. The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion under the Ministry of commerce, Government of India has come out with a discussion paper in order to address the issues plaguing the Indian Patent Office. Granting financial and administrative autonomy, Separation of Patent and Trademark offices, setting up of additional offices are some of the issues put forth for input from stakeholders. There are few strong and constructive comments based on the existing set-up of the Patent Offices in India. One very strong and constructive comment is written by Dr. Arijit Bhattacharya who was an Officer of the Indian Patent Office. Such strong and constructive comments citing empirical evidences are very rare in the history of the Indian Patent System. However, Government of India and its Secretaries seem to be reluctant on the issues of corruption, bribery, nepotism and internal politics. On the issues of upliftment of the Indian Patent Office no action has been adopted by the Ministry of Commerce or the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion by way of stopping the menace of corruption, nepotism, bribery and internal politics