The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) wants to hive off the office of controller general of patents into a separate, fully autonomous and self-sustaining entity, given the workload of this office and technical expertise it needs to harness.
The Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) would need to be more transparent in its functioning and more user-friendly, the department feels. This could be one of those rare incidents where the bureaucracy would willingly give up its control on an associate office.
In a discussion paper, the DIPP said that since CGPDTM is responsible for registration and management of Intellectual Property Rights ? Patents, Trade Marks, Geographical Indications and Designs, so, ?the work on a single authority of the CGPDTM arising out of all these statutes has become unmanageably heavy?. It said that the objective behind the exercise is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the office through re-organisation.
It also said that after the implementation of WTO?s norms on IPRs, there has been a significant increase in the number of filing of applications for trademarks, patents and designs and consequent increase in the volume of connected statutory proceedings.
The paper also highlighted the increasing work pressure of the CGPDTM by drawing a comparison with its Chinese counterpart. ?Each examiner of the Chinese Trademarks Office has to examine about 3,800 application for trademark registration on an average each year, which is four times the number in the US, three times the number in the Republic of Korea and two times that in Japan….? In contrast, each examiner in India handles 5,459 cases a year.
This, DIPP says, is ?an impossible task?, and so it?s natural that cases pile up.