Indian patent office recently has come up with the swag where the new patent draft rules are proposed for suggestions and review for all. The glance over the draft rules will give you the new vision of the IPO towards the easy and transparent patent system. IPO has covered much aspect of the pending issues or we can say important dots to draw the fine line. The brief summary of the draft rules is as follows;
1) Refund of official fees
The refund of the fees in case where during the online process the fee has been paid more than once, in such condition the additional fees shall be refunded. The refund of fees paid for request for examination is also applicable if the applicant withdraws his request for examination.
2) A specified form where no form is specified
Whoever is dealing with the patent proceedings is aware of the fact that there are many of actions which had no specified form. The relief has been provided by the IPO by introducing new FORM-30 which is specified where no form has been prescribed by the ACT.
3) Deposition of Biological Material
Patent applications disclosing a biological materials has to submit reference to the biological material within three months followed by the necessary permission from the competent authority before Grant.
4) Time for putting application for Grant
To expedite the procedure the time for putting application for grant is now proposed to reduce to 4 months with maximum of 2 months of the extension allowable with prescribed fees.
5) Request for Expedite examination
Previously the scope of expedite examination was available only for the national phase application which is now proposed to amend. The amended rule proposed the opined the way to file an expedite request for examination by a local application in certain conditions where the manufacturing of the Invention has already started in India; or the applicant or his assignee or prospective manufacturer (licensee) undertakes that manufacturing the invention shall commence within two years from the date of grant of patent”.
In addition to that proposed amendments provided option to convert the ordinary request for examination in to the expedite request. In such case the date of filing of such request for expedited examination shall be the date on which the fee for conversion has been paid by the applicant along with requisite documents.
The Controller may limit the number of requests for expedited examination to be received during the year by way of a notice to be published in the official journal for such expedited examination.
6) Opposition proceedings and false representation
The proposed amendment has introduced another clause to the opposition proceedings where false information or non-compliance of requirement for expedite examination is considered as a ground of opposition (i.e Pre-grant or Post grant) as well as revocation.
7) Hearings
Digitalization has affected the draft rules where now the hearings may also be held through videoconferencing or by other communication devices and in which written submission needed to be submitted within 15 working days. In case of adjournment of the hearings now are restricted for maximum of 3 times if the controller thinks fit in due course of written request before atleast 5 working days and prescribed fees has been paid by the applicant .
The above dots were the gist of the draft rules which has been put forward by the IPO where it is clearly seen that IPO is constantly working to make the Indian patent system as transparent and easy to prosecute in the all the public good. Here is the wait until it gets officially on board and once it shall be we hope the system will be more efficient in all the way.
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