Here’s some good news to begin the week! Earlier this year to commemorate World IP Day the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (“DIPP“) had announced the appointment of 458 new patent examiners. This was done to reduce timelines for examination of patents and trademarks. As per a recent Financial Express report, of the 458 new examiners, 396 have already joined work after training.
This indicates a four-fold increase in the number of examiners, up from the current figure of just 130 examiners. In addition, 100 examiners have been appointed separately for examination of trademarks and 263 examiners have been appointed on contract basis. With this move the DIPP aims to bring down the average time taken to grant a patent to 18 months and the time taken to grant a trademark to 1 month down from the current norm of 5-7 years and 13 months respectively.