The Indian Patent Office will now publish in the weekly journal information about list of patent applications for which First Examination Report (FER) has been issued. Though, there has been no official notification issued however, the journals issued from 13th October bear information about list of applications for which FERs have been issued.

The information is being provided in the form of a table mentioning the application number, patent office issuing the report, date of issue of FER, details of the patent agent and the email address to which the electronic copy of the FER has been sent.

The step has been taken to streamline the communication of First Examination Report/s to the agent as recently in few cases the examination reports had not reached the agents leading to abandonment of applications. Further there was no other means to verify, if FER has been issued other than visiting the file wrapper of each application through online database of Indian Patent Office (InPASS). Thus, the applicant / patent agent can now also check the weekly journal for issuance of FERs for their cases.