India: Indian Patent Office Incentivizes Women Applicants In Its Draft Rules 2018

WIPO, in its report¹ "World Intellectual Property Day 2018 Celebrates Women's Accomplishments: New WIPO Figures Show Highest-Ever Rate of Women Inventors, but Gender Gap Persists" presented on April 26, 2018, in Geneva, gave a picture of status of women in patenting in the year 2017. According to the report, although the status of women as patent applicants (Nationally or Internationally) has improved a lot in some countries like Republic of Korea and China where almost every second application comes with women as sole/one of the inventors, still most other countries need to go a long way to achieve the same. An excerpt from the report is shown in the table given below which gives country wise proportion (%) of women who are active as inventors in different countries.

Even though the above data shows India on 7th position still in reality the country witnesses gender inequality in International filings. In order to uplift the status of women, an attempt has been made by the Indian Patent Office, which is first of its kind in the field of Intellectual Property Rights. This attempt is evident from the draft of Amendments in Patent Rules² in 2018 published on December 10, 2018. The amendments are brought in by the Central Government under the aegis of section 159 of the Patents Act, 1970. The said draft is meant to be enforced after the expiry of a period of thirty days from the date on which copies of the Gazette of India, in which this notification is published, are made available to the public. This time period is given for inviting objections and suggestions from the persons most likely to get effected by enforcement of the published draft, which are then carefully considered by the Central Government and accordingly amendments are thereafter enforced.

According to the draft, following amendments have been proposed in the Patent Rules 2003:

• Rule 18 has been amended with the addition of a clause with respect to International applications. The said amendment restricts filing, leaving, making or giving all documents including scanned copies only by electronic transmission, which should be duly authenticated by the applicant or agent. It further provides the provision to submit the originals within a period of 15 days, after which it will not considered to be filed.
• An important amendment has been suggested in sub-rule (1) of rule 24 C regarding the cases where examination can be expedited before issuance of FER. Central Government has now allowed the following to avail the facility of expediting their patent application in order for grant, apart from start-ups and applications delegating India as International Searching Authority (ISA) or International Preliminary Examining

Authority (IPEA) while filing PCT application:

• Small entity;
• Natural person (where the applicant or at least one of the applicants is female);
• Government undertakings;
• Applicants eligible under agreements between Indian Patent Office and other participating Patent Offices.

• Submission of Form 28 (information to be submitted by a small entity or start-up) along with Form 18A (request for expedited examination of application for patent) is also proposed to be mandated if the applicant avails expedited examination, under all the cases except where India has been elected as ISA or IPEA for an International application.
• Another important amendment is in respect of pre-grant opposition, wherein Controller will, by order, constitute a bench of two members to dispose of the application for post grant opposition. It has also been notified that in case of ambiguity in decision of the bench, a third member can be nominated to be a part of that bench where-after decision taken by the majority will be considered as final.

The intent of Indian Patent Office to bring more women in picture is clear from the second amendment stated above. Expedited examination of Patent Application has been brought in Patent Rules, 2003, in its 2016 amendment, where this benefit was given only to start-ups and applications delegating India as ISA/IPEA during PCT filing. The current amendment adds four more types of applicant, which has made this feature more relevant to the groups, who might need to avail quicker prosecution of their applications to enjoy exclusive rights from them. It is expected that this amendment will bring in or motivate more women researchers to enter into the field of innovation, such that status of India could be improved in terms of women researchers filing applications for patents.

Footnote

1 World Intellectual Property Day 2018 Celebrates Women's Accomplishments: New WIPO Figures Show Highest-Ever Rate of Women Inventors, but Gender Gap Persists. Available on: https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2018/article_0003.html

2 Draft of Patent Rules 2018. Available at https://dipp.gov.in/whats-new/draft-patent-rules-2018

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