Indian Patent Office Issues Guidelines For Startups

In order to promote awareness and adoption of intellectual property rights of startups and protect and commercialise them, Indian Patent Office has issued some guidelines. This will guide the startups regarding the procedure to be adopted for filing/processing their applications for patents, designs, trademarks and fees to be paid to the facilitators thereof.

The step will help in encouraging entrepreneurship and to boost innovation.

As per the guidelines, a startup willing to file a patent application for an invention will have to select one facilitator from a list of 280 facilitators, who would help in preparing the request and also assess the patentability of the invention as per acts and rules.

In case, the startup is unable to select a facilitator, should contact the head office of the respective Patent Office as per jurisdiction, who shall provide three names of the facilitator and the startup will finalise the name.

The public notice further added that the fee for filing the application and other statutory fees would have to be borne by the startup. Earlier in January, the government announced to bear the cost of facilitation for filing of patents, trademarks or designs as well as relaxed public procurement norms for startups.

The application will further get passed to the Head of Office of respective patent office and will than forward it to the office of the CGPTDM (Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks).

The facilitator shall also have to monitor and perform further steps of proceedings of startups patent application, prepare the reply to any query from patent office, attend the hearings, etc. and shall file the relevant documents in patent office by following the timeline.

The process will be similar for filing and processing applications for designs and trademark, where facilitators will be chosen for list of facilitators of patents and facilitators of trademarks, respectively.