The Indian Patent office has set the deadline of March 2009 to clear all pending patent and trademark cases. As per a news report, the Controller general of patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDT) in a move to expedite the patent and trademarks granting process has fixed March 31st 2009 as the last date to settle backlog of pending patent and trademark cases on which final hearing has been held.

The Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, Mr. P H Kurien is understood to have intimated to all concerned authorities that from April 1, 2009 there shall not be any cases pending for orders for more than three months on post-grant cases and month in cases of pre-grant after the final hearing. The Controller General who has assumed charge recently while airing his views on pendency, according to the news report, emphasized that keeping such orders pending is not in the interest of public as the quality of the orders get affected by delay.

The progressive step of clearing of pending cases also seems to be gaining ground from the increased patent filings. Thomson Reuters Patent Focus Report 2009, an annual report on patenting issues at the world’s major issuing authorities, notes that the patent filings in the Indian Patent office has grown rapidly over recent times. According to the Annual Report covering the fiscal year 2006/07, available from the office of CGPDT, the Patent office received 28, 940 patent applications; while 14, 119 were examined and 7, 539 were granted. In the fiscal year 2002/03 there were just 11, 466 applications; 9, 538 examinations and 1, 379 grants.

However, the deadline of March 2009 to clear all pending cases may receive some uneasiness from the low number of examiners. According to the 2006/07 report, there were just 133 examiners operating across four regional offices – Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi. This figure rings an alarm when one considers the Patent office’s statistics for the fiscal year 2007/08. Reports from the press indicate that during 2007/08 15, 262 patents were granted, a significant rise over the number of patents granted in 2006/07.

In this milieu it is noteworthy to note the observation as given in the Patent Focus Report 2009 from Thomson Reuters drawing attention on the quality of the output from the Patent office. The Patent Focus Report observes that – “Given that the number of patent examiners in India has remained relatively static; it does not take much of a mathematician to work out that during the last fiscal year examiners granted an average of well over 100 of the applications they reviewed. Of course, this raises significant questions about the quality of what is coming out of the Indian IP Office.”

The Indian Patent office has come a long way and attaining the deadline with respect to the clearing of pending cases may prove to be another milestone achieved under able leadership. A harmony between the rapidly growing application numbers and creation of new examiner post seems to be the solution of the hour.