A patent is a type of Intellectual Property Rights or IPRs that offers the owner exclusive right for restricting others from using, selling, making, offering for sale and importing of patented product or process of the patented invention or idea without his or her consent. This provides an advantage to the patent holder to market the products and maximize revenue in a monopoly. A lot of companies in today’s market environment are opting for patent protection.
Similar to other countries, the procedure for filing a patent application and prosecution in India is governed by the Indian Patent Office. The Indian Patent Office Is administered by the office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks or CGPDTM, and takes care of patent filing and prosecution. The patent filing process in India to get granted or registered patent follows various streamlined stages and once conferred, holds for 20 years within the territory of India.
Modes of filling
An individual can file the patent application in the Indian Patent Office in the following two ways:
- Online patent filing
Also known as online patent registration, it can be performed through the Indian Patent offices electronic patent filing application known as e-service portal
- Offline patent filing
Apart from performing patent filing online, an individual can also file a patent through the offline method, where they need to submit hard copies to the respective patent office. However, the official fee for filing an offline patent application is 10% more compared to the official fee of online patent registration
Online registration
The Indian Patent office has a patent filing application, a web portal, that provides a return filing online facility for interaction, transaction and communication between the patent office and stakeholders.
The patent filing online services offers a user-friendly and transparent system that covers a comprehensive patent filing online system, in addition to the online patent registration of new applications, subsequent on and final formalities and also be completed.
Procedure
In order to proceed, an applicant has to follow the steps below:
- visit the official website of the Indian Patent office and go to the web-based patent filing application which is a comprehensive e-filing gateway
- the user needs to log in directly if they are already registered. In case they are not, register as a new user by following the DSC manual
- The user can select a new form to do a new patent filing online or the application form based on the requirement for an existing online and patent filing
- Draft the new application form
- The applicant has to upload the PDF of the required document
- Then, the applicant has to save the draft
- Then go to the already drafted forms
- The user may have to enter the mobile number for SMS alert
- The user can select the draft form and may proceed with the signing of the draft form
- Once the form is digitally signed, the user can make the payment through available options of payment gateways
- Lastly, once payment is done, the user will receive the acknowledgement receipt
