Jobs: India to recruit over 1000 patent examiners

Indian government plans to hire 1000 patent examiners for Patent Office as filings pile up.

The Indian government wants to create more than thousand new jobs of patent examiners in the coming years as an effort to address the growing number of patent applications and the paucity of staff to decide on them.

The number of applications seeking patent clearance has gone up several times after India ushered in product patent regime in 2005, following commitments with the World Trade Organization.

Job opportunities: 1000 patent examiners to be hired for the Indian Patent Office

The total number of patent applications filed in India took a steep jump to 28,882 during the period 2006-07. It was 4,824 between the years 1999-2000. However, India could grant only 7,359 patents during 2006-’07. In the period 1999-2000, India took decisions on more than 1,880 patent applications.

As the country has opened up its floodgates to other innovator drugmakers honouring their intellectual property rights, the number of patent applications are expected to reach about 72,000.

Meanwhile the mechanism to process these applications remains more or less unchanged. The present level of infrastructure including the human resource in the Indian Patent Office (IPO) is learnt to be inadequate to meet the rising demand.

Maybe, this is the reason why the Centre plans to create 1,380 patent examiners posts during the 11th Plan period. Of the total,  414 jobs are expected to be filled up in 2009,according to NN Prasad, the Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

The government of India has already spent around Rs 500 crore in the last five-six years towards the development of hard and soft intellectual property (IP) rights infrastructure, Mr Prasad said at a function organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with DIPP.

Very recently, IPO has cleared a number of patent applications including Gilead’s Tamiflu, Roche’s Pegasys, GSK’s rosiglitazone salt etc following its agenda to clear all pending applications.

The Controller General of patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDT) in a move to expedite the patent and trademarks granting process has fixed March 31st 2009 as the last date to settle backlog of pending patent and trademark cases on which final hearing has been held.

The Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, Mr. P H Kurien is understood to have intimated to all concerned authorities that from April 1, 2009 there shall not be any cases pending for orders for more than three months on post-grant cases and month in cases of pre-grant after the final hearing.

According to the Thomson Reuters Patent Focus Report 2009, an annual report on patenting issues at the world’s major issuing authorities, the Indian Patent office received 28, 940 patent applications; while 14, 119 were examined and 7, 539 were granted. In the fiscal year 2002/03 there were just 11, 466 applications; 9, 538 examinations and 1, 379 grants.

However, the total number of  patent examiners operating across four regional offices in India – Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi were 133, says the report. Hence the new job opportunities.

At the function held on the occasion of the World IP Day, the CII felicitated Hindustan Unilever Ltd for having obtained 311 patents grant by Indian Patent Office; Reliance Industries Ltd for 816 trademark registrations; and Bilcare India for 445 design registrations in 2007-08.