Sound Board

Our thoughts and views on the practice of Intellectual Property in India and around the world.

If you ask any patent agent or attorney to explain the concept of patents in two words, they will tell you that it is an “exclusionary right”. As is true in law and life, with rights come duties and responsibilities. So when you are given the right to exclude others from making your patent accessible to the public without your permission, you are obligated to ensure that you make your patent accessible to the public.

Before all else, I would like to clarify that this article does not deal with how to get a patent in India. This article merely describes the procedure for making a patent application in India. The decision to provide a person with a patent is purely an administrative matter of the Indian Patent Office. Therefore, it is not possible to provide a definitive answer to questions like “Will my product be patented?” or “How long will it take for me to get a patent?”

The Indian law for Patents, more particularly Section 8(1) of the Patents Act, 1970 (the “Act”), requires that when a person makes an application for patent in India, he must undertake to inform the Indian Patent Office regarding foreign applications which correspond to its Indian counterpart. However, the words used in Section 8(1) are broad enough to cover not just the invention for which the patent application has been made in India but also inventions which are “substantially the same” as…