Indian IP office going electronic!

It seems that the meeting which I described in my posting titled “IPO-an electronic revelation” have culminated into something finally. The article reproduced below appeared in the Economics Times stating that facility for e-filing of patent and trade mark applications are now finally here.

It is good news for the applicants and not so good news for the attorneys since the attorneys would be losing a part of their work i.e. the filing work. In any case, some inside sources (sounds like conspiracy!) say that by the time the systems are up and running, it will be some time. I hope I am proved wrong! In any case this is a good development.

The article is as below:

Patent & trademark get e-filing facility
21 Jul, 2007, 0325 hrs IST, TNN

NEW DELHI: The government has launched a facility for e-filing of patent and trademark applications to speed up the process of securing exclusive rights over a product or trading symbol.

“Applicants can file their patent and trademark applications from anywhere in the world at any time at their convenience through Internet. Payments can also be made through payment gateways of authorised bankers, which would save time and money and hassles involved in visiting offices,” commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath said.

So far, five lakh trademarks have been registered in the country and efforts are afoot to ensure that the backlog is cleared promptly, secretary in the department of industrial policy & promotion, Ajay Dua, said.

Last year, 29,000 patent application were filed in the country, of which 8,000 were approved. Mr Dua said the number of patents in the country increased by over 600% from 1999-2000, when less than 5,000 applications were filed.

The modules for e-filing and online processing have been developed by the National Informatics Centre while the payment gateway is currently being provided by the State Bank of India.

Mr Dua said the government had undertaken a Rs 153-crore programme to modernise infrastructure of intellectual property offices in the country. The fund was used to build four offices in metros.