While a lot of popular attention goes to the chemicals and drug sectors regarding their patents and litigations, the statistics show that mechanical and electrical industries are getting more focused on getting patents to stay ahead both domestically and internationally in the post-liberalisation era.
In fact, mechanical sector that was trailing chemical and drug sectors in 2000-01 in obtaining patents, took off to be the sector with the maximum number of patents received in both 2005-06 and 2006-07, according to the latest available disaggregate figures with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) in the commerce and industry ministry. The government has only provisional figures for the total patents granted last fiscal, which is 15,261.
The mechanical sector obtained 1,448 patents in 2005-06 and 2,526 patents in 2006-07, while the chemical sector, which had led the list in 2000-01, could only come second with 1,140 and 1,989 patents obtained, respectively in those two financial years.
In 2000-01, the drug sector had come second after chemicals, with 276 patents. In the same year, electrical sector had only 142 patents and was ranked behind chemical, drug and mechanical sectors.
In 2006-07, though the electrical sector stood in the fourth place, it was granted 787 patents as against the drug sector’s 798 patents. The performance of the electrical sector improved in 2005-06, when it had 245 patents, while the drug sector had obtained only 192 patents.
Manoj Pillai, an intellectual property lawyer and partner, Lex Orbis IP practice, said “chemical and drug patents are often high value patents. The value is easily measurable from the sale of particular drug. They are widely litigated and licensed. That is why there is a general perception that these sectors have the maximum patents.”
Interestingly, the computer/electronics sector, which was classified separately only in 2004-05 with 71 patents, has been consistently showing an increasing trend in the number of patents obtained. In 2005-06, the sector got 136, which further rose to 237 in 2006-07. These sectors are showing aggressiveness in not only filing more patents, but also in ensuring that their rights are protected.
Incidentally, in an order on protection of intellectual property rights in the Indian telecom industry, the High Court of Uttrakhand at Nainital restrained Lambda Eastern Telecommunications Ltd., Gurgaon, from infringing the copyright and patent rights of Acme Tele Power Ltd. The High Court, in an injunction order passed in April, restrained Lamda from manufacturing, offering to sell, selling and promoting as their products/services, the patented products of Acme TelePower Ltd.
Sandeep Kashyap, chief of consulting and associate vice president Acme TelePower said the High Court injunction was a welcome development in the appreciation of patent laws. “It encourages a company like us whose core strength is IPR patents, feel safe about the use of our technology,” Kashyap said.
“A significant percentage of the total patent filings in the area of electrical and electronics. The number of engineering patents far exceeds chemical/drug patents globally. In India also, in certain sectors like automobiles, engineering products, electronics, electricals, computers and medical devices, there is a rapid increase in filing of patent applications,” Pillai said
As per the statistics database of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) — a UN agency that specializes in developing an accessible international intellectual property system — on the technical fields of patent applications filed from 2000 to 2004, patent applications filed in electricity and electronics sectors represent 32% of the total. The three fastest growing technical fields from 2000 to 2004 were medical technology (32.2%), audio-visual technology (28.3%) and information technology (27.7%).
In India, the other sectors that received more patents in 2006-07 than in the previous fiscal were food and bio-technology, with 244 and 89 patents, respectively.