The Controller General of Patents, Design and Trademarks (CGPDTM) on August 12 has issued Revised Draft Guidelines for Examination of Patent Applications in the field ofPharmaceuticals. The said Guidelines have been revised in pursuance of Stakeholders’ meet held on July 31, 2014 wherein various comments were received from stakeholders and discussions and deliberations were held to revise the draft guidelines.
The said Guidelines for Examination of Patent Applications in the field of Pharmaceutical
inter alia outline the following:
- Development of pharmaceutical patenting in India
- Scope of the guidelines
- Various provisions covered in the guidelines like definitions of invention, inventive step and capable of industrial application and Section 3 of the Patent Act, 1970 which deals with non- patentable inventions
- Claims of Pharmaceutical inventions, particularly Markush Claims
- Prior Art Search
- Assessment of Inventive step
- Industrial applicability
- Sufficiency of description, clarity and support of the claims
- Unity of Invention
The CGPDTM has further invited comments/ suggestions to the Revised Draft Guidelines for Examination of Patent Applications in the field ofPharmaceuticals latest by September 2, 2014 at the Office of the CGPDTM or by sending an e-mail at a.chakaraborti@nic.in .