Patent seekers, rivals to get more time in legal ring

NEW DELHI: The government will give more time to patent seekers and rivals who want to block a market monopoly to enable them sharpen their legal assaults.

The proposed amendments to the patent rules, to be notified in a month, will give a patent challenger six months from the date of publication of an application to file his objections with the patents controller as against the three now.

The patent seeker, in turn, will get three months to respond to the challenge with a defence as against the one month allowed now. Both the parties will get a hearing from the patents controller on request.

The amendments to the rules notified in December last year will also speed up approvals for overseas filing of patent applications from the present three months to just 21 days.

This, however, will not apply to inventions having defence and atomic energy uses. Besides, the proposed amendments will also allow an inventor to keep his application live for four years as against the present three, without making a request for its examination.

This gives him more time to assess the commercial viability of the invention before making a request to examine it. A rival can also request the government to examine the application and decide its fate. Details of the application will not be available to the public in the first 18 months of filing.

The Controller of Patents will have to refer the application for examination in a month and report the result to the applicant in six months. The proposed amendments will also give nine months to the applicant to give more information about the invention if the patents controller raises an objection about the claims, as against the six months allowed now.

However, for applications filed before January this year, the amendments will cut short the time available from 12 months to six. The existing provision of getting an additional three months to modify the claims will be retained.

These changes finalised now reflect the views which the government received from stakeholders after it came out with a draft on the proposed amendments in June this year.