After moving fully to e-service of all the documents (including office actions) by email, Indian Patent Office has now initiated an SMS alert facility for alerting applicants/attorneys of the progress of their application at various stages of processing. The SMS alerts will also indicate the timelines, non-compliance of which may lead to refusal/abandonment of application. For this, the IPO has enabled (on its e-filing portal) the Applicants/Attorneys to update/provide mobile number in their patent applications.

All this while, the Indian Copyright Office was never a part (at least in terms of infrastructural establishment) of the five “Intellectual Property Offices” in India. This has now been changed/rectified by moving the Indian Copyright Office to the Delhi branch of Indian Intellectual Property Offices.

Controller General of Patents, India, and Director General of WIPO signed Cooperation Agreement on 5th October 2017 to facilitate the electronic exchange of data and documents including priority documents, search and examination reports and other related information between Indian Patent Office (IPO) and WIPO through WIPO CASE and WIPO Digital Access Services (DAS). As per the IPO, this Agreement covers cooperative activities for the improvement of IP business services, including projects for digitalization, data capture, data quality improvement, data exchange for dissemination of IP information, document management, online search and any related systems or modules and creation of national and/or regional IP databases. This is likely to benefit not only the Applicants filing PCT Applications claiming priority from Indian Patent applications, but also the Examiners at the IPO and WIPO handling such applications. Further, the Agreement also facilitates India to become a depositing office for WIPO CASE, thus enabling WIPO to make available the search and examination reports of Indian Patent applications.

Patent Office has today issued a Public Notice declaring that the generation and issuance of Patent Certificates has been fully automated and digitized. As per the Indian Patent Office, with immediate effect, all the Patent Certificates will be generated by automated system and transmitted by email to the Applicant/Attorney’s registered email on record. These Certificates will also be available on the Patent Office’s online portal for downloading. The Applicants/Attorneys have been requested by the Patent Office to update their email ids on record.

India may soon launch an IP Exchange which will enable inventors, corporations, SMEs, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and other interested parties in India and around the world to buy, sell, license intellectual property rights across sectors. It is likely to be developed under the Ministry of Science and Technology through the National Research Development Corporation (“NRDC”). Countries like United Kingdom and Hong Kong already have their IP Exchanges.