The Office of Controller General of Patents have now made available a “dynamic utility” grid to enable the applicants and patent agents to view the month of Request For Examination, for which the Office Action is currently being issued by the various branches of the Patent Office.
The dynamic grid displays the information about the month and year of Request for Examination (Form 18) that are being examined and FER being issued in each examination group i.e. Electrical/Electronics, Mechanical, Chemistry and Biotechnology.
The grid that is currently being displayed is reproduced below:
| GROUP | DELHI | MUMBAI | KOLKATA | CHENNAI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical/Electronics | April 2008 | January 2009 | December 2008 | November 2008 |
| Mechanical | June 2008 | January 2009 | July 2008 | October 2008 |
| Chemistry | June 2009 | April 2011 | February 2010 | January 2009 |
| Biotechnology | September 2009 | April 2011 | July 2009 | February 2010 |
The notification however states that the displayed month and year are only indicative in nature as it may take some time to exhaust all the requests of a given month depending upon the work load.
The applicants/agents are also advised to submit their query if by any chance they have not received Examination Report in cases where requests were filed 3 months prior to currently displayed month and year of the respective group.
It is worth mentioning that we at S.S. Rana & Co., had also given suggestion, regarding availability of the information with respect to number of patent applications being examined by the Patent Office in a particular month, to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (on November 8, 2012 in response to the Paper on Draft National IPR Strategy) in this
this regard. [http://dipp.nic.in/English/Discuss_paper/feedBack18_IPRStrategy_09November2012.pdf]
The grid and the notification can be accessed from the Indian Patent Office’s website at: http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/rqstatus/