Patents stuck in office

1,843 patents granted in '04-05 on 17,462 applications.

Indians may be bagging patents the world over, but the story is very different at home. Even though the number of applications for patents filed during 2004-05 increased more than three-fold, from 5,330 to 17,462, authorities here issued just 1,843 patents during the period. Compared with 1,759 patents granted 10 years ago in 1994-95, this is hardly any improvement.

Several thousand applications are gathering dust in the country's four patents offices in New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.

On an average, an application stays well over four years with patents offices before a final verdict is handed out, against two-and-a-half years in the US and the EU. Companies and patents attorneys often complain of applications getting misplaced.

The portents are ominous for India's scientific and industrial progress. Clearly, the patents infrastructure of the country is bursting at its seams.

The patents offices in India have about 300 examiners, compared with 3,700 in the US, 4,000 in China and 6,000 in the EU, which operate through a centralised office.

There is only one training centre for Indian patents examiners, while there are 12 in China. To address the problem, the Indian government has hired 200 examiners but it can turn out to be too little, too late.

"The government has realised that the backlog needs to be cleared. But it is a slow process and will take time," said an official.

Manpower shortage is just one of the problems. The patents offices do not have access to all the data bases of applications around the world. The "absolute novelty" clause in the Indian patents law requires that patents across the world be scanned. Since access to data bases is limited, precious time is lost while studying applications.

"Unlike its counterparts in the US, Japan and the EU, the Indian office has access only to free data bases but not the paid ones," said H Subramanium, a practicing patents attorney. The lower efficiency levels of Indian patents offices has been attributed to a lack of information technology. As a result, companies often complain of applications getting lost in traffic.

"The patents office has been losing applications. Since a project to modernise the process has not yet linked all the branches to the same network, the problem will persist for some time," said a prominent patents attorney.

To address infrastructure issues, the government has launched a project to computerise the four patents offices with a total outlay of Rs 115 crore. While their physical infrastructure has been modernised, records have not yet been computerised.