A slow revamp of patent offices

NEW DELHI: It’s a patent shame. Despite a fast-approaching deadline of 2005, the modernisation of patent offices in the country is proceeding at a snail’s pace.
Till fiscal 2002, the government spent only Rs 25 crore of an allocated Rs 75 crore (in Budget 2000-01) to upgrade patent offices. As things stand, patent offices have a backlog of 32,000 applications.Typically, China and South Korea can process 50,000 patent applications a year. In India the figure is 10,000.
Industry observers feel the entire exercise is marked by lack of initiative, evident from non-utilisation of allocated fund. Considering the onset of product patent regime from 2005, modernisation should gather steam to avoid backlog.
Government officials say the modernisation drive at patent offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore are on and will be completed in the near future. In particular, modernisation at Mumbai and Kolkata are at advanced stages and will be completed soon.
The Tenth Plan (2002-07) has allocated Rs 95 crore for this purpose.
According to Pravin Anand, a patent lawyer, the government is doing quite a lot towards modernisation and there are some visible changes. Between 1970-1995, only 3,500-4,000 applications were processed in a year. After 1995, with some postive developments, the figure has gone up to 10,000.
However, Anand agrees that compared to the US and Europe, Indian patent offices do not match up and the modernisation programme needs to speed up considerably to achieve those standards.
‘‘We still have a long way to go to catch up with the developed countries,’’ adds a senior official of a leading pharma company. He felt the problem lies in absence of database and no information on whether a patent has been applied for or not and ragarding patent applied in other countries.