[Ip-health] Indian Patents Ordinance to allow post-grant opposition

[Ram]

Patents Ordinance to allow post-grant opposition

Pallavi Majumdar | Business Standard



The government is planning to allow post-grant opposition to patents
in an Ordinance that will give effect to the Patents Bill by the end
of the month. The government may, however, introduce a time-limit of
90 days for pre-grant opposition.

The Group of Ministers (GoM), which was given the task of proposing
amendments to the Patents Act as India switches to a regime of product
patents from January 1, is understood to have noted that though
Section 25 of the Act provides for opposition to a patent after it has
been accepted and published but awaiting grant, there is no prescribed
time-limit for its final disposal.

The GoM has suggested that this can be plugged by restricting
pre-grant opposition to a period of 90 days. The government also wants
to reduce the time taken to grant patents from the existing 27-104
months to 5-50 months.

The government proposes to do away with the provision of making a
separate formal request for sealing of the patent. This would save
nine months of time for the applicant, the GoM has noted. It has also
suggests doubling of the six-month grace period to obtain patents by
inventors who have published their inventions.

The Ordinance will allow withdrawal of application before the
publication, restoration of lapsed patent and provision for
provisional rights to the patentee till the patent is granted.