Tuesday, June 03, 2008

FICCI advocates 'knowledge centres' [India]

Industry body Ficci today said knowledge and education centres should be set up in patent offices across the country to educate the public with the role of Intellectual Property in emerging economies. The centres could house exhibition areas, besides making available literature on Intellectual Property to create awareness about protection and enforcement of IP, according to a Ficci release.

Ficci and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) have constituted a Consultative Working Group to make the Indian Patent Office more responsive to industry. In recommendations made to DIPP, Ficci said users who file patent applications electronically should be incentivised by reducing their filing fee. Transactions of records across patent offices also need to be expedited, it said.

As a result of deliberations of the consultative group, a separate wing in Mumbai Patent Office has been set up for data analysis. The data include records on technical fields by year of filings, number of patents granted to a company in each sector, list of companies filing patents, pending applications and country-wise patents in force. The patent office has also made online the abstracts of patent applications as well as copies of patents granted and decisions of the controllers, enabling third parties to check legal status of the patent application, the chamber said.


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