Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2021- Highlights

The Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2021 came into effect on September 21, 2021 by amending the Patents Rules 2003.

Key Points

• By amending the rules, Union Government has reduced the patent filing and processing fees that are charged on educational institutions by 80%.
• This reduction in fees is at par with similar concession available to start-ups under the Start-up India initiative.

Why patent fees have been reduced?

• While applying for patents, innovators have to apply these patents in the name of institutions which have to pay very high fees for large applicants and thus work as a disincentive.
• Thus, to encourage greater participation of the educational institutions, playing a significant role in India’s innovation, official fees have been reduced.
• According to DPIIT, educational institutions engage in various research activities, where professors or teachers as well as students generate several new technologies that are required to be patented in order to facilitate commercialization of the same.
• But high patenting fees restricts these technologies to get patented and thus work as a disincentive for development of new technologies.
• To do away this problem, Patents rules have been amended several time in order to achieve the objective of removing procedural inconsistencies and unnecessary steps to process the applications.

SIPP Scheme

Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) launched the scheme, Facilitating Start-ups Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP) in order to provide facilitators with filing and processing of their applications. Professional charges of such facilitators are reimbursed in accordance with the provisions of the scheme.

Month: Current Affairs - September, 2021