Indians now free to applyfor patents abroad

Indians now free to applyfor patents abroad
ENS ECONOMIC BUREAU

NEW DELHI, DEC 25: Indian inventors have now been granted the freedom to file patent applications outside the country at any point of time with the deletion of Section 39 of the Indian Patents Act, 1970.

Earlier, this section had imposed constraints on Indian inventors and restricted the flexibility available to them as they had to wait for six weeks before filing for a patent outside the country.

With the removal of this restriction, Indian inventors need not have to wait for the additional period of six weeks for seeking the government's prior approval, official sources clarify.

In accordance with the obligations contained in the agreement on trade related intellectual property rights, India is required to amend the Patents Act, 1970 by December 31, 1999, in respect of the scope of patentable inventions, providing for exclusions from patentability, providing a uniform term of patent protection of 20 years, alignment of compulsory licensing provisions etc.

Sources say the government has had consultations with major political parties and representatives of chambers of commerce regarding the provisions of the amended Product Patents Bill which has now been referred to the select committee of Parliament.

During the period from January 1, 1995, to October 31,1999, 2994 applications for product patents have been filed for pharmaceutical products and 494 applications for agricultural chemical products.These applications are yet to be taken up for examination.

The patents are granted in accordance with the provisions of the Patents Act, 1970. However, according to Section (e) of the Act, a patent cannot be granted on an admixture resulting only in the aggregation of the properties.