A few months ago, the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks released their annual report (hereinafter referred as ‘report’) for the 2013-2014 financial year. The report explains in detail, all statistics pertaining to Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Designs, and Geographical Indications (GI), for the aforementioned time period. Let’s have a look at the statistics and analyze the transformation Indian IPR system is undergoing. We begin our analysis with the Patent domain.
The Patent system has a well set framework, which allows a patentee to enjoy exclusive monopoly over the patented invention, during the term of patent. Though the popularity of Patent protection and IP as a whole is increasing, the total number of patent applications filed in 2013-14 were 42951, as compared to 43674 in the previous financial year; which shows a marginal drop of 1.65%. However, Indian applicants appear to be showing more enthusiasm with a 10.4% increase in the total number of applications filed, as compared to that in the previous financial year. Top 3 filing states were Maharashtra (2892), Karnataka (1639), and Tamil Nadu (1436) respectively. Further, the top 3 Indian applicants were Tata Consultancy Services (169), Samsung R&D Institute India – Bangalore Pvt Ltd (84), and Infosys (83) respectively. Top 3 in the list of foreign resident applicants were Qualcomm Incorporated (1062), Koninklinjke Philips (839), and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (386) respectively. As per the report, there is 11.47% decrease in the number of convention applications filed in India. The report further indicates a dip in the number of PCT National Phase Applications by 4.8%.
The Indian Patent Office (IPO) has examined 18615 applications during the period considered, which shows 52% increase as compared to that in the previous year. Further, the IPO has disposed 11411 requests for examination, which shows 26% increase as compared to that in the previous year. 634 out of 4227 total patents granted, in the period considered, belong to Indian applicants. Further, out of the total patent grants, 1111 belong to applications relating to chemical and relating fields, 690 to Computer Science and Electronics, 645 to Mechanical, 256 to Drugs or Medicines, 237 to Electrical, 220 to Biotechnology, and 51 to Food. Total number of PCT applications filed by Indian Applicants is 816, which is less than that in the previous year (1042).
Though the number of applications appears to be less than that of the previous year by a small margin, the overall statistics shows progress, and indicates that the Patent system in India is heading in the right direction. Let’s hope that we will see better results in the upcoming reports.
Authored by Naveen KM
