How many Controller decisions are given in one day? Following a curious post by Sandeep Rathod on LinkedIn noting that a whopping 1500+ patent decisions, perhaps the largest ever in a single day, were put out yesterday, we took a quick look at the information available to see for ourselves. It looks like there’s been a large increase in the number of decisions being put out every day! For comparison, we took the first 15 days of this month (March 2024) and compared it with September 2023, and March 2023 (i.e., 6 month intervals backwards). And found a tremendous jump! (Please note, today’s numbers – March 15, 2024 are from around 4pm and are likely not complete yet as they are probably still being uploaded).
As a brief summary, barring weekends, the average daily number in March 2023 was 131.9, in Sept 2023 was 173.5, and for March 2024 was 697.4!! Keep in mind that the 15th for March 2024 is not yet complete at the time of checking. That’s something like a 4-5x increase!! (Please note, we did not look further than the data here, as half month periods for every 6 month seemed like useful indicators to begin with. Perhaps if we look further, we’ll find more insights. If any of our readers do so, we welcome you to share your findings as well).
From what we can tell from public sources, it does not look like the number of controllers or patent examiners has increased. Though here too, it’s not exactly clear how many examiners are actually in the office.
The 2022-23 Annual Report gives the following information (for full table and details, refer to page 168):
| (As on 31/3/2023) | Working Strength | Sanctioned Strength | |
| Examiners | 593 | 773 | |
| Asst Controllers | 189 | 498 | |
| Dept. Controller | 43 | 112 | |
| Joint Controller | 7 | 48 | |
| Senior joint Controller | 2 | 5 |
The Feb 2024 newsletter at page 19 mentions this line: “Upon the induction of the 553 Examiners from this recruitment drive, the total workforce of Examiners of Patents & Designs will reach 771”, However, this would mean that there are 218 in the workforce currently. (The current stage of the recruitment drive is that the interview stage will take place on April 1st, so it’s not the case that they have already been recruited).
In any case, the underlying point remains that there is nothing we could find to show that there have been an increase in the number of controllers or examiners, yet there is a huge increase in the number of decisions. Readers who may have more informed thoughts on how the exponential increase has happened, or what it may mean for patent quality, are welcome to chip in in the comments below!
(Thanks to Praharsh for helping with putting together the numbers).