Patent
■ Authority： Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trademarks, CGPDM, generally known as the Indian Patent Office (IPO)
■ Evolution of the Indian Patent Act:
■ Type of Applications:
- Provisional Application: invention is still under experimentation stage
- Ordinary Application: without claiming any priority
- Convention Application: claiming a priority
- PCT International Application: Under Patent Cooperation Treaty
- PCT National Phase Application: national phase application in India
- Patent of Addition: slight modification
- Divisional Application: invention may divide and file two or more applications
■ Basic points in Indian Patent application:
1: Important time frame:
| Term of patent protection | Right of priority | Average wait time | Grace Period |
| 20 years | Within 12 months | 5~6 years | 12 months |
2: Basic requirements & Process:
| Language | Hindi/ English |
| Documents | Legal information, Technical information, Power of attorney, Verified English translation of priority document (if applicable, may be submitted within 31 months) |
| Criteria of patentability | Novelty、inventive step、Industrial application |
| Early Publication | Publishes within one month from the date of filing of such request |
| Expedited examination | The First Examination Report (FER) issues within 1 – 2 months, and the application could grant much faster than the regular route. |
| Opposition | Pre grant opposition: by anyone within 3 months from publication Post grant Opposition: by any interested person 12 months from the date of grant |
| Statement of Work | submit each year a statement regarding the commercial scale of use in that respective year. |
| PCT National Phase entry | 31 months from the date of priority |
| Revocation | Within 1 to 2 years from the grant of patent |
3: Patent Prosecution:
Design
Some basic points:
- Grace period: A six-month grace period is available in case of disclosure of the design before filing.
- Reciprocity Application: convention country’s applied design can be filed within six months from the date of priority.
- India follows Locarno Classification system.
- Required documents: The priority documents, in case of a convention application; and an English translation thereof ; A power of attorney
- Multiple embodiments of the same article in a single application is not allowed
- Term: 10 to 15 years (The initial term is ten years which may be further extended for 5 years more)
- Average wait time: around 6 months if all requirements are met.
- Prosecution：
