With India grappling with massive backlog of Intellectual Property Rights applications, the Government on Saturday said patent pendency will be brought down to the same level as in advanced countries like the US and Japan in the next 18 months.
“We have a huge pendency of IPR. We have just recruited about close to a 1,000 patent examiners and we are outsourcing to IITs. In 18 months time we will bring our patent pendency to exactly the same level as in the US and Japan. And in about a year's time we will bring the trade mark pendency down to zero level,” DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant said at the Startup India conference here amid huge applause. About 2.46 lakh patent applications and 5.32 lakh trademark registrations were pending (as on November 1, 2015) due to shortage of manpower. On the other hand, the pendency level is quite low in developed countries like the US and Japan.
Kant was moderating a session where Secretaries from various departments like Economic Affairs, Financial Services, MSME, Corporate Affairs and HRD were responding to queries. MSME Secretary Anup K Pujari said the new single page registration form in the ministry has become extremely popular and efforts were on to further simplify it.