Govt Assures Safeguarding the Intellectual Property Rights

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New Delhi : The Government has taken several steps that have led to an improvement in patent filing, as also for safeguarding the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).This information was given by the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

Some of these steps :

National IPR Policy for India was adopted by the Government of India on 12th May, 2016, as a vision document that lays the future roadmap of IPRs in India. The Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) has been set up to coordinate the implementation of the National IPR Policy.
IP awareness programmes have been undertaken in academic institutions, at both school and college level, as also for industry.
To streamline the processing of IP applications, IP procedures have been simplified and made user friendly by amendment to the Patents Rules in 2016 and Trademarks Rules in 2017.
Since 2014-15, the manpower has been augmented both in the Patent office and Trademarks registry which has resulted in major impact on pendency of IP applications.

In the year 2018-19, 15284 patents were granted, as against 5978 in the year 2014-15. In the same period, the number of trademarks registered in a year has also gone up from 41583 to 316798. Domestic filing of patent applications has increased from 12,071 in 2014-15 to 17,163 in 2018-19, showing a 42% increase.

The Government has taken following steps, inter alia, to enable and assist startups for filing of patents:

Under the amended Patents Rules, 80% patent fee reduction has been provided for Startups as compared to large companies.
Under the Scheme for Facilitating Startups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP), 208 Patent Agents have been empanelled as facilitators by the Controller General of Patents, Trademarks and Designs, to provide assistance to Startups in the preparation and filing of their patent applications and, subsequently, during the stage of prosecution of applications before the Patent Office. Fees of the facilitators are paid by the Government as per the norms of the scheme.
Startups are also eligible for getting the processing of their patent applications expedited.

As on 31st May 2019, 1719 Startups have availed the benefit of 80% fee rebate. Further, 512 Startups filed for expedited examination of their patent application, of which 453 have been examined, and 151 patents already granted.