Indian Patent Office extends deadline to submit comments on revised Guidelines for Examination of Pharmaceutical Patents

The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) released a document titled the draft guidelines for examination of Patent applications in the field of pharmaceuticals on February 28, 2014 which was open for comments until March 31, 2014 which was eventually extended to April 4, 2014.

On June 12, 2014, the CGPDTM listed the feedback which was received from various law firms and interested parties on their website. Furthermore on July 31, 2014 the Office hosted a session to discuss the comments and clear some of the issues which were raised.

Finally on August 12, 2014 the revised draft guidelines were put up the website with a deadline for final comments by September 2, 2014.

That deadline has now been extended one last time until September 5, 2014.

The Guidelines deal with the developmental history of pharmaceutical patents in India, assessment of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability and related issues like prior art searches, unity of the invention what inventions are not patentable. The guidelines are followed by the patent office’s examiners and are useful to anticipate tentative issues that may arise.

There are two more days to send in comments to achakraborti@nic.in

This article has been authored by Navarre Roy, an IP Law practitioner.

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