India sees sharp drop in patent applications
Globally, India ranks 7th, China tops list of most patent applications.
While patent filing at the Indian patent office has seen a rise of 23.97 per cent from 2007-08 to 2012-13, assessment shows that only a meagre 22 per cent of them have been filed by Indian applicants in 2012-13. While 43,663 patents were filed in 2012-13, a majority or 78 per cent were international applications.
The trend has been consistent over the years. In 2011-12, out of the 43,197 patent applications filed, 80 per cent were foreign applications. In 2010-11, the total number of applications filed by the Indian applicants was 8,062, which accounts for only 20.46 per cent of the total number of applications filed during that fiscal.
“According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPO-2012) report, while China’s contribution to the rise in patent applications globally has increased from 37.2 per cent between 1995-2009 to 72.1 per cent between 2009-11, India’s contribution decreased from 3.5 per cent between 1995-2009 to 2.7 per cent between 2009-2011. The report shows that while China topped the global list by filing 503,582 patent applications, India was ranked seventh with 42,291 applications,” said Rakesh Kumar, deputy controller of patents and designs and head of Mumbai office.
“There has been a great improvement in the filing of patents. But indigenous filing of patent applications is only 22 per cent currently and needs to be increased by encouraging research and development in India. Our target is to double the number of patents filed by Indian applicants in the next few years,” said E M Sudarsana Natchiappan, minister of state, ministry of commerce and industry, who was in Mumbai to assess the system.
According to figures given by the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks, Mumbai, for the 2013-14 financial year, 28,850 patents have been filed upto o November 2013. While 11,751 applications were examined in 2007-08, 12,186 were examined in 2012-13.
Significantly, figures show that as far as granting of patent is concerned, India has seen a sharp drop of 72.96 per cent from 2007-08 (15,261 granted) to 2012-13 (4,126 granted). For 2013-14, 2,185 patents have been granted up to November 2013.
“There are two reasons for this drop, one being shortage of examiners as examiners were promoted to controller rank. Another reason is that from 2009 onwards, quality system was introduced in the patent office by adopting patent manual, patent office procedures and various guidelines regarding quality examination,” said Kumar.
According to the patent office, maximum applications in 2012-13 were filed in mechanical (around 9,000), followed by chemical (7,000). While computer-related applications accounted for 4,500, about 4,300 were filed in the field of drugs, followed by 2,500 in electrical and close to 900 in biotech.
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