Indian patent office to hire 900 people to enhance manpower: DPIIT secy

Indian patent office (IPO) will be hiring 900 more people with a view to enhance manpower for processing the increasing number of intellectual property applications, a top government official said on Friday.

Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Rajesh Kumar Singh said that patent filing has increased by ten times and trademark application filing by six times since 2016.

"We are trying to strengthen the capacity of our IPO to process these proliferation of applications. We are going to add 900 new positions for which recruitment is already underway in our patent office," Singh said at the national intellectual property conference.

He also said that steps taken by the government has helped India improve its global innovation index rankings.

India retained its 40th rank out of 132 economies in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2023 rankings, according to a report by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization.

Though the ranking is improving, "We have a long way to go", he said.