By Vikrant Rana and Renu Bala Rampal
Gradual upsurge in year-on-year number of domestic patent filings achieved a remarkable milestone in the quarter Jan-Mar, 2022, when it surpassed the number of international patent filings at the Indian Patent Office (IPO) for the first time in 11 years. Total 19796 patent applications were filed with the IPO out of which 10706 i.e. 54.08% were filed by the Indian applicants against 9090 by non-Indian applicants. Parliamentary committee in its report in July, 2021 said that in 2019-20 domestic patent filings had a share of 36% in total patent filings in India and the main reason cited was lack of awareness of IPRs in India.
Graph: Quarter-wise patent applications filed by Indian applicant vis-à-vis non-Indian applicant
Source: PIB press release
This feat was appreciated by the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal and the efforts made by the DPIIT and IP office on strengthening the IPR regime in India and increasing IP awareness among all strata of society were acknowledged.
Key features taken by the Indian Government which boosted India’s IP regime includes fee concessions like 10% rebate on online filing, 80% fee concession for Start-ups, Small entities and educational institutions, and provisions on expedited examination for start-ups and MSMEs along with other categories.
The collective efforts made by the several stakeholders including the Government and its National IPR policy has transpired into the following achievements for India:
- More than 50% of increase in patent filings in 7 years from 42763 in 2014-15 to 66400 in 2021-22.
- Around five times increase in grant of patents in 2021-22 (30,074) as compared to 2014-15 (5978).
- Reduction in time of patent examination from 72 months in Dec 2016 to 5-23 months at present, for different technological areas.
- Improvement in ranking of India in Global Innovation Index from 81st in 2015-16 to 46th in 2021.
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Shantanu Mishra, Patent Agent at S.S. Rana & Co. has assisted in the research of this article.