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October 15, 2007
Dear Mr.
Prime Minister,
A nation’s future and its ability to compete in the global market depend greatly on how it generates new ideas and innovates in science and technology. Intellectual Property creation and protection are critical issues in global knowledge based competition. Countries like China, Japan and Korea have improved their respective IPR systems through intense capacity building efforts, with a view to achieving greater innovation. It has become imperative for India to scale up efforts to build a world class IPR infrastructure and ensure that IPR is used in the best national interest for more extensive innovative research, technology transfer, wealth creation and overall benefit of society. Our consultations with various stakeholders have helped to identify some key areas that will facilitate such systemic reform. Some of these areas involve the granting of product and process patents, in which both the configuration of the state mechanism for patent examination and the systematization of a substantive perspective of patent examination keeping both treaty obligations and national interests in mind are crucial issues. Other critical areas involve alternative non-patent modalities for the creation and sharing of knowledge and inventions. Below, one area, namely, the configuration of the patent examination mechanisms, is discussed, with some reference to allied issues in patent utilization.
1.0 Modernization of IP offices
1.1 The processes in the IP offices need to become more accessible and user friendly and therefore, the ultimate objective of all efforts to modernize the patent offices must be to facilitate more transparency and procedural ease for the inventor as well as the common man. The NKC is aware of the initiatives proposed by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in this regard, especially those pertaining to modernization of infrastructure, computerization, digitisation, e-filing, reengineering of procedures with information technology integration, human resource development, efficiency, transparency of procedures and creation of an operational environment of global standards. The need to be sensitive to the needs of the everyday citizen is crucial if the IP offices have to transform themselves into service providers delivering solutions with the greatest efficiency and highest quality standards. In this respect, some suggestions are as follows:
- The patent offices must be adequately e-enabled in real time with adequate search facilities so that all its transactions are transparent and publicly accessible.
- The examination procedures, practices and decisions in the IP offices should be streamlined and consistent
- A new detailed and clear manual of the examination procedure and practice, accompanied by full text versions of all the relevant IP laws of the country, should be created, periodically updated and made available to the public, in soft and hard copy. Interested stakeholders, particularly including civil society as the major stakeholder, must be involved in its preparation This is particularly important since new Indian patent examination procedures will need to be devised keeping both treaty obligations and national interests in mind, and the creation of an adversarial process of patent examination will be crucial in these procedures.
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