Why patent is delayed in India?

On April 27, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) released the 2022 Special 301 Report on Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement, where it expressed several issues with India's IPR protection and quoted ‘remained one of the world's most challenging major economies concerning protection and enforcement of IP,’ it has decided to retain India on its priority watch list along with other six countries Argentina, chile, china, Indonesia, Russia, and Venezuela.

What is a Patent?

A patent is a form of intellectual property that is contracted between an applicant/inventor and the government wherein the government provides the right of protection of the invention for a limited time after the full disclosure of the invention by the applicant /invention, India, through The Patent Act,1970 an invention relating to a product or a new process, involving inventing step and capable of the industrial applicant can get patented. A few examples of patents are a light bulb, telephone, microwave oven, etc.

Patentability Criteria 

As a patent is always applicable to inventions, it must fulfill three criteria to get patented.:

• Novelty
  This means that your invention must not have been made public, or it should not be disclosed in the public domain, not even by yourself, before the date of the application.

• Inventive step
  This means that your product or process patents must be an inventive solution meaning it must not be obvious. It cannot be a solution that would be obvious to a manufacturer. Say, for example, there is a different attachment method that is Instead of welding the tubes of a swing together, they can be screwed together. This may be a new method of making swings, but for those already in this business, it is very obvious, so it cannot be patented. 

• Industrial Applicability
  This patentability criterion implies that the new invention must have some industrial application. So, an invention must be susceptible to industrial application.

Why is patent filing in India delayed?

• It is estimated that there are more than 1,60,000 pending cases in India and only 858 patent officers. Till 2016 it only had 280 officers where it takes 1 to 3 years to get a patent sanctioned, whereas, in China, there are around 13,704 people employed at their Patent Office and around 8,132 people at the US Of

• Delay in disposing of patent applications due to shortage of manpower at the patent office is the prime reason. As around 860 patent officers were employed in Patent Office in India at the March end of 2022, including both examiners and controllers, this is the cause of the delay.

•  The Economic Advisory Council to PM (EAC-PM) said that though there have been improvements in India's patenting regime over the last few years, the country has to travel a long way to cope with other countries, which prompts even domestic players to seek patents elsewhere. 

• Alongside, India ranked only 46th in the latest global innovation index report prepared by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

• The concept of intellectual property was introduced to safeguard and encourage the intangible creation of human intellect, but the poor infrastructure and limited resources have created a huge backlog.

•  India has also seen a surge in domestic applications, with 44% of them coming from Indian entrepreneurs in 2021 compared with 29% in 2016-17, while the rate of withdrawal of applications has reduced to 38% in 2022 compared with 66% in 2018, primarily due to delay in granting patents.  

• Around 16 lakhs applications were pending at the Controller level in India as of March 31st, 2022.

Reasons for Patent inadequacy in India

The reason behind relatively low patents in India is low expenditure on research and development, which was just 0.7 percent of GDP in 2020. This number is a small fraction of the patents filed and granted in China and the US and the committee has made specific recommendations to bolster the efforts of the government in this respect.

India is blessed with a large pool of creative individuals with efficient and innovative ideas. This necessitates establishing a robust IPR regime with targeted strategies and government policies that will strongly support the holistic development and sustainability of the intellectual rights of individuals.

It further recommends enacting laws on issues such as anti-counterfeiting, trade secrets, financing of IP assets, AI inventions, and educational copyrights. Through the successful implementation of its recommendations, the committee aspires to bridge the gap between innovation, economic activity, and IPR. This will generate employment opportunities and encourage the inflow of foreign exchange.

Conclusion 

In these last few years, India has recognized the problems and scarcity of resources related to patents and has also shown a few steps toward betterment but to compete with western countries and promote indigenous innovation a lot more efforts are needed. So, it is suggested that hiring more manpower should not be delayed on financial grounds as this is a revenue-generating activity for the government in India.