The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Geographical Indications (Patent and Trademark Office) issued annual report for the year 2017-2018 analyzing how the office has performed. Listing out important achievement in terms of improvement in IP administration, digital reforms and reengineering of IP procedures that has resulted in decreased pendency and higher rates of disposal of IP applications. There has been increasing trend in filing of applications for Patents, Designs, Geographical indications and Copyright.

The important highlights of the Annual report are set out below:

Patent filing and prosecution:

• Filing of patent application has increased by 5.3%
• Number of patent applications examined increased to more than double (108.2% increase over previous year)
• Grant of patents increased by 32.5% and disposal of applications increased by 57.6%
• Top Institute in filing the patent application is Indian Institute Of Technology. We have proudly assisted Indian Institute Of Technology in drafting and filing of the patent applications
• In the case of applications originating from abroad, the U.SA leads with the maximum number of applications (8,619) followed by Japan (3,537) and Germany (2,166)

WIPO CASE and WIPO DAS:

Both WIPO CASE as well as WIPO DAS are now functional for IPO. The WIPO Digital Access Service (DAS) will help facilitate easy, secure, quick and inexpensive procedure for submission of certified copies of Priority documents submitted by the applicants from the participating Patent offices which will benefit the stakeholders.

Trademark filing and prosecution:

• The registration of trademarks has shown an increase of 20.33%.
• The number of applications filed this year is 272974.
• The largest number of applications received was in respect of goods in Class 5 (Pharmaceuticals, Veterinary and Sanitary Substances etc.)

Design filing and prosecution:

• Filing of Design application has increased by 15.9%
• In the case of applications originating from abroad, the U.SA leads with the maximum number of applications (1021) followed by Republic of Korea (434) and closely followed by Japan (433).

Geographical Indications:

A total of 38 applications were filed and 18 applications were examined. A total number of 25 Geographical Indications were registered.

Copyrights:

A total number of 17841 applications were received during 2017-18 and 34,388 applications were examined

In summary, the data captured in the annual report, particularly with respect to patent filing and prosecution, shows an impressive work done by the Indian IP Office. This is also in line with the National IP policy objective of modernizing and strengthening service oriented IPR administration.