The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Geographical Indications (Patent and Trademark Office) issued annual report for the year 2016-2017 analysing how the office has performed and listing out important achievement. The report is not only content reach but also aesthetically attractive compared to the reports of earlier years. Further, it shows substantial progress made by the IP Office in addressing backlog.  The important highlights of the Annual report are set out below:

• Augmentation of manpower, which includes recruitment of Examiner of Patents to be 458 while Examiner of Trademarks to be 100
• Patents Highlights of the year
  • Examination increased by 72.2%
  • Grant of patents increased by 55.3%
  • Final disposal of applications increased by 37.7%
  • Qualcomm Incorporated being the topmost foreign filer having filed 1840 patent applications while amongst Indian applicant/s, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research was the topmost Indian filer having filed 104 patent applications
  • 26,645 PCT national phase application was filed this year which shows a decrease of about 6% as compared to the previous year figure of 28,248. USA (8,981) being the top filer country followed by Japan (3,399).
  • This year 42,870 (as compared to 39,507 of last year) statements on ‘working of patents’ were received on Form 27, out of which 11,318 (as compared to 8,589 of last year) patents were reported as working
• Trademarks Highlights of the year
  • Pendency reduced from 14 months to less than 1 month
  • Increased acceptance of trademark applications for publication from less than 10% to about 40%
  • Till the end of year 2016-17, WIPO had notified to the Indian Office, 33,788 international registrations seeking protection of trademarks in India. The Indian Trademark office had ccommunicated Provisional refusals  to the WIPO in respect of 17,157 cases. After completing all the procedures, the Grant of protection communicated for 4283 marks.
  • USA was the topmost filer with a total of 3792 application filings
• Designs Highlights of the year
  • Pendency reduced from 8 months in March 2016 to one month in March 2017
  • Amongst Foreign applicants, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. filed maximum Design application (180 applications) this year
• Geographical Indications (GI) Highlights of the year
  • Total Number of GI Applications Filed were 575
• Copyrights Highlights of the year
  • During the year 2016-2017, a total number of 16,617 applications were received as against 14,812 applications filed in 2015-16.

The annual report shows that the Patent and Trademark Office has clearly focused in reducing pendency by accelerating the examination and speedy disposal of the cases by using technology and augmenting manpower. The efforts of IP Office has indeed made a remarkable difference considering the rapid spurt in the grant and disposal of patent and trademark applications. We congratulate the IP Office for a remarkable year. The detailed report can be accessed here.