The CGPDTM (Controller General of Patents Designs and Trade Marks) has been instrumental in stepping up the efforts of the IPO in making more patent information available online, with the introduction of a new search tool named InPASS (Indian Patent Advanced Search System), in February, 2015.
The Indian Patent Office is showing its commitment to providing transparency to the public about patents. In 2010, the CGPDTM office launched IPAIRS, Indian Patent Information Retrieval System. Subsequently, the CGPDTM has constantly been improving IPAIRS, offering new search fields such as Applicant Address and PCT Number in 2012, and introduced Stock and Flow Based Dynamic Patent Utility in 2014 to enable access to real time patent information.
In February, 2015, CGPDTM introduced InPASS, a new search tool. InPASS allows full-text search to be conducted for patents as well as patent applications, allowing for search using wild-cards, truncation and Boolean operators. With this, IPAIRS has now officially been withdrawn.
We hope that the new search capabilities introduced by the CGPDTM will be a step forward in making patent information accessible to the public & that this tool helps to ensure that stakeholders do not pay monopoly prices for undeserved patents.
