“The MoU signed between India and the EPO earlier this month in Munich in Germany will help in creating a strong Intellectual Property (IP) ecosystem and capacity building of Indian industry and stakeholders,” said Dieter Tzschoppe, director pure and organic chemistry, EPO.
Tzschoppe was addressing a workshop on ‘Gathering Technical and Commercial Information from EPO’s patent information products and commercialization of IP’ organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and European Business and Technology Centre (ETBC).
“The signed MoU will give a major boost in this endeavour (intellectual property) and diversify EPO’s engagement by extending co-operation to areas of mutual interest such as exchanging best practices with a view to improve quality and service delivery,” said Tzschoppe.
On November 7, EPO and the Union government signed an MoU on bilateral co-operation establishing a framework for structured work relations between the EPO and the Intellectual Property Office of India (IPO India) for at least four years. Supporting the development of the patent system in terms of service delivery and efficiency, particularly by means of technical co-operation and exchange of best practices in areas such as patent examination, administration and information is the chief objective of the agreement.
Meanwhile, the EPO said that out of the 43,674 patent applications filed with the Indian Patent Office in 2012-13, 9,911 were filed by Indian applicants. In fact, both national and international patent filings by Indians have increased considerably in 2012-13 alone, by 11 per cent and 32 per cent respectively, year-on-year, it said in a statement.
Out of the approximately 1,100 international patent applications filed by Indian residents in 2013, 564 applications were received by the EPO, the statement highlighted.
Tzschoppe said that Asia’s share in patent filing at the EPO had risen to 40 per cent, adding that China registered 15 per cent annual growth rate of filing.
Samsung pipped Siemens to top the list of the largest applicants at the EPO in 2013, followed by Philips, EPO said, adding that among the ten most active filers, five companies came from Europe, three from Asia and two from the United States.
Samsung filed 2,833 patent applicants with the EPO. US, Japan, Germany, China and South Korea continued to be the top five countries filing patent applications at the EPO.
Arvind Chopra, head-IPR, EBTC, said that the workshop will benefit both European and Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) looking for collaboration in India, with EBTC facilitating EU-India collaboration on technology transfer by informing audience about services available for joint research, transfer of technology and industry-industry collaboration.